298. Rango

298. (02 Dec) Rango (2011, Gore Verbinski) 50



The eccentric, mildly amusing humor of Rango might've sustained it for an hour, but it certainly wears out its welcome with that extra 45 minutes. There's some impressive use of animation, particularly in how well-utilized water is. This looks infinitely better than the ugly aesthetic of Pixar flicks. The tacked-on environmentalist message is unnecessary.

DARK SHADOWS

DARK SHADOWS
Written by Seth Grahame-Smith
Directed by Tim Burton
Starring Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer and Eva Green


Barnabas Collins: Of all the servants I could have spurned, I got the witch.

The original soap opera television series, DARK SHADOWS, is before my time, I’m afraid. I’ve never seen the show but from what I understand, it was a bizarre endeavor that, about six months into its roughly 5-year and 1225 episode run, introduced ghosts and other supernatural elements into its world, a first for daytime television for sure. About a year in, the show reached its height of popularity with the introduction of a vampire character by the name of Barnabas Collins. Boys everywhere wanted to be this debonair creature, who is both heroic and flawed. One of those boys was Johnny Depp.

Depp’s boyhood dream of being Barnabas has finally come true. These kind of dreams can do that when you have enough money and clout to resurrect a cult classic such as DARK SHADOWS by convincing Hollywood that you can sell it to the masses. And not surprisingly, Depp brought on his long time director buddy, Tim Burton, to helm the project, a seemingly natural choice. After all, Burton is the director of BEETLEJUICE and EDWARD SCISSORHANDS. If there is any director out there that can capture that kooky, yet sometimes scary, but still human deep down, tone needed to pull this film off, it’s this guy, right? Unfortunately, as of late, Burton is more often than not the director Hollywood goes to when you need a vividly colorful and imaginative film that plays so broad it loses all its actual character. DARK SHADOWS falls somewhere in between the two Burton’s.

Burton does his best to keep these particular shadows pretty darn dark. Barnabas loses his parents at a young age, at the hand of a scorned lover, Angelique (Eva Green), and then watched his girlfriend plummet to her death off a cliff while under the influence of a magic spell (also administered by Angelique). When he reemerges in 1972, nearly 200 years after he was buried alive - well, more like buried undead - he rejoins his family, now led by a lovely Michelle Pfeiffer, and insists that they work together to reclaim the power and glory the Collins name once commanded. Any steam Burton musters in the setup though is lost once Barnabas is distracted by things like lava lamps and televisions. And then this epic, century-spanning, cursed feud is reduced to a corporate competition between fishing companies. Depp is delightful as Barnabas, which salvages DARK SHADOWS from disaster, but it would be nice to see Burton’s once unbound vision become boundless again, rather than see it consistently watered down for mass consumption. The worst part is that Burton is doing this all to himself.

THE RUM DIARY

THE RUM DIARY
Written and Directed by Bruce Robinson
Starring Johnny Depp, Aaron Eckhart and Amber Heard


Paul Kemp: I don’t know how to write like me.

Last fall, I heard some of the most ridiculous comparisons made when the Johnny Depp vehicle, THE RUM DIARY, tanked at the box office. The trades went off about whether or not Depp was washed up because his latest had brought in nowhere near what his PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN outings. Somehow it didn’t seem to occur to anyone that it might stand to reason that a small movie about a journalist who escapes to Puerto Rico in the 1960’s might not be able to take in the billion dollars the latest “Pirates” spectacular had. Sure, Depp stumbles around like he’s drunk in both of them but one of those movies has swords too. THE RUM DIARY didn’t stand a chance.

Expectations were reasonably high for THE RUM DIARY given Depp’s cult following for FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS. Both films are based on Hunter S. Thompson novels so the logic was that the support for the first film would spill over to the latest. The trouble with this rationale is that films about drug and booze addled messes don’t always connect in theatres, meaning home video time is THE RUM DIARY’s time to shine, right? Technically, yes, but the movie does have to be worth watching regardless. Under the direction of Bruce Robinson, who has not made a movie himself since 1992’s JENNIFER EIGHT, Depp’s second dance with Thompson is considerably tame, much less trippy and disastrous than one would expect.

THE RUM DIARY has a certain breeziness to it that make it a much better film to be screened at home than in cinemas. While in Puerto Rico, Depp’s Paul Kemp, gets caught up in excessive drinking, entangled with a woman who is already spoken for (Amber Heard, spoken for by Aaron Eckhart) and mixed up with a bunch of fat cats who want to get even fatter off the backs of the Puerto Rican people and their gorgeous landscape. It all amounts to a lot of meandering moments and conversations that ultimately bring Depp absolutely nowhere. Like that breeze, it passes through, can be somewhat enjoyable for a moment or too but once its gone, it’s forgotten.

Review copy provided by eOne.

Rango

Is Rango really for kids? I have my doubts. Yes it's an animation. Yes, it has a bunch of characters that mind you are very likeable but are in no way cuddle-able (I think I just made a word up!). But, aside from the simplicity of the story, I would find it hard to imagine someone smaller than say 14-15 years old truly enjoying Rango.

The beauty of Rango is in the characters and the direction. The story about a mistaken hero saving a town is almost as old as films are, but the comedic dialogue is what makes the movie a must watch. There are the obligatory slapstick comedy scenes which will appeal to the little ones, but all in all, the entire movie is more dialogue driven.

Just like any good animation all possible clichés are present when it comes to the motto of the story. It's all about believing in yourself, helping your friends, not judging based on appearances, not lying to your friends, and it even has an almost spiritual angle to it. On a positive side, although the story is predictable, its treatment is different. There were still a number of unpredictable elements to the story that kept it interesting.

The voice talents in the movie are so strong with Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Ned Beatty, Alfred Molina, Timothy Olyphant (as an almost Clint Eastwood look-alike "Spirit of the West") that if the movie was not so entertaining, it would have been a real shame. Thankfully, the movie does justice to the people who were part of it and visa versa.

So, if only the movie plot was a little less predictable, it would have received a 4 out of 5 star rating from me, but since it is extremely predictable I decided to take off 0.5 stars to give a well deserved 3.5/5 stars.  

REVIEW: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (B-)

(dir. Rob Marshall, 2011)

Full disclosure: this franchise is something which, despite poor quality and confusing narratives, I cannot hate.  No matter whether or not a Pirates film is good, I manage it thoroughly enjoy it.  It's the hold the franchise has over me.  Color me a biased film critic, matey.  (Also, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl in all it's by-the-book and Disneyfied glory, is my favorite film of all time.  Right around The Silence of the Lambs, Pulp Fiction, White Christmas, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind).

But this film, the fourth in an admittedly bloated series, was attempting to recapture the start-up magic of the original.  It was without the second and third films' penchant for elaborate, complicated plots and subplots.  But it never fully recaptured the feeling of the original.  What was so grand about the first three was their undeniable epic scope; you felt like you were watching something that was a true adventure flick.  But On Stranger Tides doesn't have that feeling.  It's deflated.

This time around, Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp prancing around in the role that made him a star) is left yet again without a ship trying to locate the infamous Fountain of Youth.  Along his way he meets villain turned ally turned privateer Hector Barbossa (a perfectly hammy Geoffrey Rush), an erstwhile paramour (Penelope Cruz), and the mysterious Blackbeard (Ian McShane doing what he can to save the role from disaster).  Oh, and there's a replacement for Orlando Bloom's Will Turner in their somewhere and a mermaid.  But best not to bother ourselves with talking about them in depth, the filmmakers certainly didn't.



McShane, as I said, is doing what he can to save the part.  Blackbeard is easily the worst villain of the franchise, and simply because he's written so poorly.  A bad guy going out to seek the Fountain of Youth so he doesn't die?  Is that it?  Is that suppose to make him a bad guy?  He doesn't try to kill Jack, Barbossa, or anyone we like.  His majestically powers of battleship embottlement, zombification, and rope manipulation are never explained nor do we ever get a good glimpse of what make Blackbeard so vile.  At least with Davy Jones and Barbossa we understood their means to an end, even if their means were vicious.  The Pirates series never had a villain you could really hate; Barbossa just wanted to taste an apple and Jones was just a sad, heartbroken man.  But with Blackbeard, you're just told he's a bad man and you're left at that.

Reporting to duty, I was told I have to save this film?

I know the legion of stalwart Pirates fans voiced their criticism over the third installment (and even the second one), and how Disney didn't either hear or chose not to address those concerns is perplexing.  Perhaps their notion of going back to the original was eliminating overly excessive battle sequences and frothy plots, but I'd be hard to find anyone who doesn't cite the maelstrom scene from At World's End as that film's highlight.  Or the Kraken attacks from Dead Man's Chest, or that delicious final sword fight between Jack and Barbossa in The Curse of the Black Pearl.  In this film, there is not defining scene, no moment of pure excitement.  The climax seems merely little less than an afterthought and in many ways a foregone conclusion.

The true highlight of the film wasn't a battle, or a scene full of visual effects wonderment, but rather the brief scenes between Jack and Barbossa.  Johnny Depp and Rush have always such a marvelous chemistry, and I always felt their lack of togetherness in the second film stopped it from being great (granted, Barbossa was dead in that film...mostly).  It doesn't hurt that the writers gave Barbossa the only intriguing motive to do anything in the whole film, what with trying to enact revenge on the man who cost him his leg (and when Rush tells his tale vengeance, it's a scene of splendid acting).  When they're together, how they play off one another is just a type of magic you can't create with CGI.  If the fifth film wants to do better with everyone (audiences and critics), I think re-pairing that dynamic duo would be a wise decision.

A poor man's Will and Elizabeth

But this fourth installment just doesn't have the charm of the first three.  There no fun banter between straight man Will Turner and crazy man Sparrow.  No Pintel and Ragetti.  No Governor Swan or Norrington.  No fun villain that you secretly root for.  It feels too small, and there's not one standout performance.  Bother Depp and Rush are great, but a far cry from their work on the earlier films and not for lack of trying or prowess, but rather because the parts and the direction gave them little to work with.  It seems director Rob Marshall's career has been in a bit of a nosedive since he nearly won an Oscar in 2002,  as he's followed the best Picture-winning Chicago with Memoirs of a Geisha, Nine, and now this.  From the man that gave us "Cell Block Tango," I was expecting more grandeur, and instead I got a stifled, under-realized film.  The series needs Gore Verbinksi back and pronto.

But still, just being able to see Rush and Depp on screen again in these parts was a large portion of my enjoyment.  And I cannot argue with the genuine joy I get from seeing Capt. Jack.  That enough is enough to see the film.  I just wish there were more reasons.  GRADE: B-








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PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES

Written by Ted Eliott and Terry Rossio

Directed by Rob Marshall

Starring Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Geoffrey Rush and Ian McShane

Barbosa: You haven't changed.

Jack Sparrow: Implying the need.

It’s fitting really that the fourth installment in Disney’s PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN series, ON STRANGER TIDES, finds everyone’s favourite captain, Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) searching frantically for the fountain of youth. The franchise itself has not exuded any true vigor since the first time it sent sail and, now serving under the new direction of Rob Marshall (CHICAGO), it simply drifts aimlessly at sea while trying to recapture its former glory. Drastic changes were made to the format, most notably a major cast overhaul, to rejuvenate it and allow it to stand alone as a one-off story in hopes of keeping Disney’s treasure chest plentiful. The only strange thing about these tides though is that anyone is still watching and waiting for them to come in.

Some of the aforementioned drastic changes include the shedding of previous series regulars, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly, to make room for fresh blood, Penelope Cruz and Ian McShane. Also gone are the overly complicated plot lines incorporated into the second and third installments to justify their existence. All they managed to do was infuriate audiences and suck all the fun out of the franchise anyway so that’s no loss. Instead, this adventure is meant to exist unto itself and it most certainly does this. It just doesn’t bother having any fun in the process. Depp returns as the character he has brought nothing new to for years now and he joins a bunch of other pirates, including Cruz, whom he had some sort of sordid affair with way back when, as they search for the location of the fountain of youth. Aside from an encounter with some of the most vicious mermaids I’ve ever seen, this amounts to little more than a lot of walking and talking in the jungle.

The truth is there is nothing strange about these tides really and this is why the film doesn’t work. A new director and a new approach were supposed to thrust some fresh gusts of wind into the aging franchise’s sails but all it truly manages is to raise this sunken ship to the surface again and leave it there to rock monotonously back and forth, in unnecessary 3D no less. (This by no means applies to McShane, who is the only point of interest past those scary mermaids.) Considering previous pirate complaints centered around how confusing it all got, I am surprised that Marshall leaves us with more confusion this time around too – more specifically, why is this series still going? Oh right, treasure.

RANGO

Written by John Logan

Directed by Gore Verbinski

Voices by Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin, Ned Beatty and Alfred Molina

Rango: No man can walk out on his own story.

As I waited for RANGO to start, I was forced to sit through a number of trailers for this year’s other expected animated features. All are unnecessary sequels hoping to cash in on previous success and they all look forced at best. All are of course in 3D as well to ensure the largest returns possible. It all got me wondering where the originality has gone. Even RANGO is yet another animation where animals walk and talk like human beings but somehow this lizard manages to stand out amongst the competition. And he does this despite his best efforts to blend in.

When we first meet Rango, he is self-described as someone who “has yet to enter his own story”. To be fair, your story options are somewhat limited when you’re living in a tank. Fortunately for Rango, and at the precise moment when he realizes he is desperately in need of “an unexpected event to propel the hero into conflict,” he finds himself suddenly trapped in a chain of events that leads him to his new life in the Mojave Desert. Now, Rango is no ordinary lizard. More specifically, he is a chameleon and designed to blend in, but has been on display his whole life. With no idea who he actually is though, Rango has always had to rely on theatrics and drama to distract from himself, which appears to have taken its toll. The other particularly incredible thing about this lizard? He is voiced by Johnny Depp.

Depp is the epitome of neo-cool. He has always been cool by constantly coming off as the embodiment of the freshest take on more classical ideas of cool, without ever looking like he is trying. Here, Depp channels the sprawling cinematic drawl of the Spaghetti Western, with help from his former PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN director, Gore Verbinski. Depp brings his humbled awkwardness along with him and when you couple that with Rango’s incredibly deep-rooted insecurity, you’ve got a lizard in one heck of an existential crisis. While all of this elevates RANGO to a height of animated sophistication that is both thought provoking and hilarious at times, it is also decidedly adult. In fact, an owl mariachi band repeatedly reminds us throughout the film that we are watching the story of our hero’s demise. Taunting children that death is coming seems a bit frightening to me but the owls are awful cute so the news doesn’t seem quite so harsh.

Naturally, Rango meets a bunch of other critters in the desert, most of them not so cuddly, and he must help them save their town by playing the hero they so gravely need. In order to do so though, Rango must actually become the hero instead of just playing the part. Some of RANGO’s imagery and themes may be scary for younger audiences but it’s Rango’s angst over not knowing who he is that will be most frightening for adults. And seeing as how some us never actually get around to pointing that mirror inward, maybe its not such a bad idea after all to get people asking the question a little earlier in life.

THE TOURIST

Written by Florian Henckel von Donnersmark, Christopher McQuarrie and Julian Fellowes

Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmark

Starring Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Paul Bettany and Timothy Dalton

Frank Tupelo: You're ravenous.

Elise Clifton-Ward: Do you mean ravishing?

Frank: Yes, I do.

Elise: You're ravenous.

Some poor sap of a math teacher from Wisconsin is sitting on a train en route to Venice from Paris when it happens. A devastatingly beautiful woman enters his car and spots the empty seat in front of him. Her gaze throws him completely off balance and from the moment she sits down, he doesn’t stand a chance. Who is she? Why would she sit with him when she could sit with any man she wanted? You just know that by the time they get off the train, their lives will be desperately intertwined. This is how Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, two of today’s biggest stars, meet in German director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmark’s first American foray, THE TOURIST. It’s all so old Hollywood but sadly it’s also all so transparently so.

Sometimes star power can have a blinding effect. The wattage can burn so bright that you don’t necessarily see how distracting it is from the actual film. And with stars as big as Depp and Jolie in your picture, it isn’t surprising that von Donnersmark, the man behind Oscar winner, THE LIVES OF OTHERS, didn’t notice that they were not necessarily the best choices for their roles. Depp, with his beautiful hair and instinctual charm, is anything but a believable sap. Still, that charm inevitably saves him from coming off farcical and his decidedly anti-Bourne jaunt across shackled rooftops is certainly amusing. Meanwhile, Jolie seems to have been directed to walk around like a fembot of sorts, cold and false, from her perfect walk to her supposedly British accent. They are stars for a reason though and before long, the impossibly pretty people in the pretty foreign place lull you into comfortable and classical state of intrigue.

The setup for THE TOURIST is straight out of a Hitchcock movie. All the elements of a tantalizing mystery are there but all the goods are given away upfront so there is nothing left to guess at. Of course, seeing as how we don’t live in classical Hollywood, modern necessities like twists and surprises must occur and they are neither twisted nor surprising but at least they aren’t insulting. And so like a real tourist on a mediocre vacation that promised to be so gorgeous in the brochure, the stay is acceptable, at times even enjoyable, but we are happy to know we are going home when the credits roll.

Public Enemies

With the exception of “The Last of the Mohicans” (1992), I’ve never had a desire to see any Michael Mann film more than once. That record continues with “Public Enemies”, one of the biggest disappointments of the year.

Probably the biggest irritation is Mann’s insistence of shooting on high definition video with hand held cameras. I found it very annoying and it really took me out of the movie. I was always aware I was watching a movie - and not even a movie, but a cheap-looking video.

The “Public Enemies” book by Bryan Burroughs was a stunning read, detailing the crime spree that racked Middle America in the early 1930s. For a short period of about 15 months or so, every day saw newspapers accounts and radio reports relating the exploits of John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, Alvin Karpis and the Barker Gang to a Depression-weary audience. In those early days FBI agents were not allowed to carry guns and it was the easiest thing in the world to rob a bank in Indiana and hightail it to Illinois, where the chase would end at the state line. What was needed was a national police force that would not be put off by state boundary lines.

The book was impossible to put down, describing shoot outs in downtown Chicago and Kansas City that read like something out of the Wild West (only with Tommy guns).

Such sprawling material meant much had to be left out, so Mann focuses on John Dillinger (Johnny Depp, too low key), pursued by G-Man Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale at his dullest) on direct orders from J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup).

I was disappointed at how lackadaisical Mann treats the material. For a film with such colorful characters it’s curiously uninvolving. The film meanders from one bank robbery to another, with time spent in between of Dillinger romancing coat check girl Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard).

Mann also believes the audience already knows details of the Dillinger saga, so no need to repeat them. When Dillinger breaks out of the jail in Crown Point, Indiana, the audience assumes he was able to smuggle a gun into the jail. He didn’t of course, but used a gun carved out of wood. We’re never told this, and I’m sure there are people watching the movie that do know about the wooden gun story.

More Mann sloppiness occurs when the FBI tracks Dillinger’s gang to the Little Bohemia lodge in Wisconsin. The raid is a disaster, with much ammunition discharged, several civilians accidentally killed and Dillinger and most of his gang escaping.

We see the civilians killed but it doesn’t register for a while that they aren’t gangsters, but innocents. Surely it wouldn’t have hurt to have a quick establishing shot or two showing them as civilians. When they’re killed, we don’t feel anything due to Mann’s incoherent staging.

And I’m sure Mann and his acolytes feel that the hand held camera work makes us feel part of the action. For me, it had the opposite effect. Like I said earlier, the swaying camera and irritating close ups took me out of that sequence the entire time. I was always aware of watching a movie. It didn’t envelop me, but pushed me away.

That Little Bohemia shootout was the inspiration for a similar sequence in the James Cagney film “G-Men” (1935) with FBI agent Cagney on the trail of a vicious hood (Barton MacLane at his nastiest). This is a stunning set piece, with bullets flying all over, sets being destroyed by ricocheting gunfire and a genuine sense of excitement. What does it say about current movies that two action scenes – similar in situation – where the 1935 offering has it all over the 2009 one?

One of the film’s affecting sequences is the montage of close ups of Myrna Loy as Dillinger watches “Manhattan Melodrama” (1934) at the Biograph Theater, the night he is killed. It’s obvious Dillinger is thinking of Billie as he watches Myrna. There’s more emotion in that short scene than in the preceding two hours. It’s not enough to salvage this mess. Mann has made the dullest Dillinger film to date.

Another Halloween Video Party

Well last Sunday I attended another Halloween video party, a long-standing one with some friends of mine and their kids. Now that the kids are growing up, we’ve decided to up the terror quotient a bit and away from the Universal and Hammer standbys (as good as those films are).

We started out with the original “Halloween” oops, sorry, make that “John Carpenter’s Halloween” (1978), a film I’ve never cared for and this recent viewing did nothing to change my opinion. Everyone knows the story by now, so I’ll say I find Jamie Lee Curtis’ girlfriends in this movie pretty obnoxious and not at all likeable. I think the pacing is slack and I find the whole movie something of a bore. My dad and I saw this in 1978 on a Saturday night at a packed house at the Dolton Theatre and both of us walked out wondering what the big deal was. Donald Pleasance is always a welcome presence in any movie and he’s fine here, but when all is said and done it’s pretty dull. Carpenter’s musical score is pretty good for an amateur, but he hasn’t written anything good since and someone should tell him to hire a professional composer to score his movies.

I’ve never thought Carpenter was a particularly good director. “John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness” (1987) is one of the worst horror movies of all time, as is “John Carpenter’s Vampires” (1998), a film so awful on every level it left me angry that I had wasted my time with it. Even seeing “Vampires” on a Saturday night with two women (giddy up!) did nothing to quench the loathing I felt for “Vampires.”

I’ve always been irked by the possessor credit he puts in the titles of his movies. Films are a collaborative art but putting his name in the titles really irritates me, none more so than when he adapted (very badly) “Christine”, the classic Stephen King novel about a possessed car. Of course when Johnny Boy put it out it became “John Carpenter’s Christine.” No, I don’t think so. He didn’t come up with the story, characters, or situations. To put his name in the title like that strikes me as hubris of the worst kind. If it was modified to read “John Carpenter’s Production of Christine” that would be one thing, but not “John Carpenter’s Christine.” Who does he think he is? Stephen King should have sued.

Rating for “Halloween”: Two stars, which makes it John Carpenter’s best film.

Next up was a classic from my youth “Count Yorga, Vampire” (1970) starring Robert Quarry in the title role. This tale of a vampire stalking modern-day Southern California is a low-budget goodie filled with genuinely creepy moments. Containing none of the tortured self-doubt that curse modern day vampires, one gets the feeling that Count Yorga thrills in his existence and the vampiric thrall he holds over people. Plus, the film has one of the most effective “pulling aside the drapes to have a face staring in at you” sequences I’ve ever seen.

I first saw this film in 1971, when I was nine years old. We didn’t do a lot of traveling as a family, so when my dad would take his vacation in the summer we would have a week of day trips and each of us was allowed to do something he or she wanted to do. My choice was to drag the family (on a gorgeous summer day) to the Bremen Theaters in Tinley Park to see a double feature of Count Yorga and Vincent Price in “The Abominable Dr. Phibes.” (1971). My parents were appalled at the graphic quality of the sex and violence (for a PG-rated film) and the bosomy presence of Yorga’s vampire brides. They absolutely refused me permission to see the sequel “The Return of Count Yorga” (1971) when it played at the Dolton. We all enjoyed Dr. Phibes however, and that memorable double feature has now entered the family lore.

Interesting bit of trivia: The film’s score was composed by Bill Marx, son of Harpo. Anytime one can work the Marx Brothers into a discussion is a good thing.

Rating for “Count Yorga, Vampire”: Three stars.

The last movie of the festival was “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (1984). 1984? Sheesh, where does the time go? The first film to introduce Freddy Krueger, the first Nightmare film kicked off one of the better and more imaginative of the horror franchises. Wes Craven can out-direct Carpenter any day of the week, and the story of a dead serial killer who can enter his victim’s dreams to kill them still holds up. I just wish the ending was stronger. Like so many movies today, the directors and writers don’t know when to stop and insist on giving us two or three climaxes when only one would do. The film is also noteworthy of introducing Johnny Depp, though, to be fair, his performance here gives no indication of the acting powerhouse he would be down the line.

Rating for “A Nightmare on Elm Street”: Three stars.