Tusk (2014)

“Tusk” cannot be unseen or flushed away. It deserves both. Pitched I suppose as a spoof on the “Human Centipede” flicks, once-talent Kevin Smith directs with the urgency of a fatty waving off farts as he sits alone on his watching bad TV. Justin Long plays a shock jock who gets kidnapped by a Canadian madman (Michael Parks) with a fetish for walruses. Yes, walruses. So, poor Long becomes a walrus. Yeah, Tusks in his mouth. Flippers. Funny mustache. Bodily morphed like the teens in “Centipede.” But it’s the audience eating shit here. Smith spoons it. Satirizing an OTT satire is a bad idea. Smith is all bad ideas. Halfway in, he drops in Johnny Depp as a redneck Canadian Inspector Clouseau hunting Parks’ psycho in a side plot that stops the film dead. Jokes about Canadian accents (!!) abound. (Are those still funny?) The tonal shift is so bewildering and Depp’s “performance” so wink-wink self-aware, it’s as if Smith is testing his most loyal fans’ patience: “Can you believe this shit!?!” Long gives his all. As a BFF, watch the lights go out in Haley Joel Osment’s eyes. Career panic. I can’t say Depp even cares. D-

Transcendence (2014)

A week after seeing Wally Pfister’s “Transcendence,” the flick barely registers in my brain. I vaguely recall the finale as insulting, and unfathomably boring, everything proceeding a slog lacking any remote urgency. That’s an unexpected turn for director Pfister, who served as DP on all of Chris Nolan’s films, including “Inception.” Johnny Depp is Will, an AI genius obsessed with loading a person’s consciousness to the Cloud because, I mean, that’s safe. When fate deals Will a blow, his scientist wife (Rebecca Hall) uploads hubs to a supercomputer lest she lose him forever. Will 2.0 takes his new environment too well, becoming a HAL high on Orwell: Watcher of all, raiser of dead, and controller of the Cloud, and clouds. The folks at Infowars might shake in fear. I yawned. See, Depp -– appearing like a ghostly sleep-deprived Max Headroom -- mumbles his lines and gets halfway creepy, but never dangerous. This film desperately needs danger. Skip HAL. Will becomes a lovesick Speak N’ Spell. I won’t spill the end, but know this: It defies logic in such a leap that it left me fuming. Artificial intelligence has never been slower. D+

The Lone Ranger (2013)

Hi-yo Silver whatever … Johnny Depp headlines a new version of “The Lone Ranger” so long and eyesore messy, unnecessarily complex, and drunk on flimsy CGI, I don’t have the energy to relive it. Depp is one awkward Tonto, while Armie Hammer is the Ranger, a would-be hero overlooked in his own saga. Done. D

Sleepy Hollow (1999)

“Sleepy Hollow” is perfect Tim Burton id: Gloriously dark atmosphere spiked with a wicked sense of humor, misfit characters that can only be saved by love, surreal violence, and a god-awful story with stabs of brilliance, but mostly ugly exposition. Burton and screenwriters Andrew Kevin Walker and (un-credited) Tom Stoppard take the Irving story and dump the school teacher for a NYC police constable (Johnny Depp, brilliantly good) advocating science forensics to his detriment in an age -– 1799 -– drunk on religion. Crane is sent to Sleepy Hollow to investigate a series of lobbed-off heads by a demonic man on a horse, minus his own head, and the latter is no joke, because this is Burton, and magic, evil, and trees of death puking blood abound. Crane’s arrival –- filmed by Emmanuel Lubezki, scored by Danny Elfman, with a set from purgatory –- is marvelous, fused with old Hammer Films and 1931’s classic “Frankenstein.” Brilliant: Depp plays Crane as a heinous wus, using a teenage boy as a human shield. Weak: Huge story errors and a conspiracy-heavy reveal that defies reason. Christopher Walken plays the horseman, growling with devotion to Burton’s majestic dark yearnings. I miss this Burton. B

Dark Shadows (2012)

Are there two men more likely soul mates than actor Johnny Depp and director Tim Burton? Can there be any doubt these guys make their films first for each other, us second. “Dark Shadows” is a prime example: A supernatural off-kilter oddball of cinema, and a mash letter/ homage to a cult hit TV series that Depp and Burton adored 40 years ago. If it only worked, if only the film had an air about it more substantial than the feeling Depp and Burton are really saying, “You need to see this show!” Well, why not the movie? 

The story: Barnabas Collins is the son of a wealthy fishing magnate in 1760s America who spurns his housemaid f-buddy (Eva Green) for his true love Josette (Bella Heathcote) – to eternal punishment, for the angry lady, Angelique, is hell in heels, a witch with an endless temper. She kills Barnabas’ family and his true love, and then makes him a vampire, cursed for eternity, before locking his ass in a coffin for 196 years. Ouch. Rocket to 1972, and a newly released Barnabas finds himself in the timeline of Nixon, Karen Carpenter, and lava lamps. Angelique awaits, rich and powerful, lording over the Collins heirs (led by Michele Pfeiffer, wonderfully sour). 

It’s all ripe for satire, culture jokes and hippie-munching humor, and we get all that, but we don’t get enough of the tragic romance, the eternal desire Barnabus has for his lost love, Josette, and her 1972 reincarnation, Victoria. Yes, there’s a reincarnation. During the climatic “Death Becomes Her”-riffing battle that $100 million budgets can buy, I barely noticed, and the film barely acknowledges, the long absences of the lady who unwittingly started it all. Oh, wait, there she is! At the end! Sigh. 

Depp – once again in chalky white makeup and creepy black wig, his signature Burton look -- is perfect in the lead role of Barnabas, slowly rolling his fangs around every word, gesture and arched eyebrow. He makes his vamp into a gentleman in line with the great dapper vampire Christopher Lee (who has a cameo), but one vexed by Eggo waffles and Steve Miller Band song lyrics. 

A huge part of me wished Burton, Depp, and screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith (author of “Pride, Prejudice and Zombies”) had gone for a grisly, out-of-control hard R, ala “Sleepy Hollow,” a far darker comedy than this wink-wink lightweight romp can provide in a PG-13. Among the missed opportunities – besides sweet buckets of blood – is a cameo by ’70s shock rocker Alice Cooper, who Barnabas calls “the ugliest woman I never met.” Heh. Even the jokes are lodged in the 1970s. 

End note: I miss the Burton of “Beetlejuice” And “Edward Scissorhands.” Yeah, the special effects were (purposefully) cheap, but, damn, I left fulfilled with cinematic glory. The original show was all about cheapness, apparently, but this film spared no expense. For sets and makeup and special effects. Dime store story, though. Not Dark enough. B-

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

I watched “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” twice in one week to truly understand how much of an empty-headed, empty-hearted letdown it is, a dull gray shadow of its first outing, “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” one of the most fun Big Hollywood Tent Pole Movies of 2003 and the past decade.

That was a deserved Hollywood blockbuster: The thrill of seeing undead men walking on the ocean floor in moonlight to take a ship, Geoffrey Rush’s gleefully nasty villain who, I swear, I wanted to win because he was so … rotten good, Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, a swashbuckling conman hero with eye-liner who took part in the action yet remained aloof, a comedic Puck-like character from Shakespeare. With an undying thirst for rum, rum, rum. And rum. It was as if Depp said, “You want me to headline a Hollywood summer film? Alright, stand back.” The cast and characters (including Orlando Bloom and then-unknown Keira Knightley as the hero and damsel in distress) seemingly had no idea how to contemplate the actor Depp or the character Jack, and in once hilarious scene Bloom all but breaks the fourth wall to make sport of Sparrow/Depp.

“Black Pearl” was and remains a fun blast. No one knew it would work. It did. Massively. (Rush was robbed of a Best Supporting Actor nomination, fact.) The film remains endlessly rewatchable, just to pick out the shifts and squirms in Depp and his pirate self. The inevitable sequels disappointed, they had nowhere to go but down, but they limped along nicely enough. This? This fourth sequel? Third sequel? Shit, does it matter? No. I have thus far avoided talking about it have you not noticed? It hurts my cinematic brain.

Depp is back, and the center stage as Jack Sparrow, the first mistake in this Rob Marshall-directed (he made “Chicago” and “Nine”) crapper that has no spark, no center, or soul, or logic. (Gore Verbinski helmed the first three.) Even hair-brained Hollywood logic, by which I mean the “Don’t think, enjoy” mantra is gone. Depp looks deeply sullen and uninterested from the start as he badly impersonates a London judge then – must I explain? – gets mixed in with a former flame (Penelope Cruz) and the nastiest pirate of all, Blackbeard (Ian McShane). It is McShane who gives some pulse to this mess, which leaves Bloom and Knightley behind for another couple two boring to speak about, and I say that knowing the dude plays a Christian missionary and the lady plays a genuine mermaid. How that can be boring, I’ll never know, but the writers behind this film make it so.

The whole darn lot is after the Fountain of Youth, and the climatic fight over it – involving pirates, Brits, the Spanish navy, those mermaids and zombies, yes, zombies – plays like an AARP promo. Arthritic, with bad-lighting, and lots of mugging. I mean sorry-ass smiles, not robbery, unless one counts the price of a movie ticket or DVD. The filmmakers whip up so many switcheroos that the endless double crosses become redundant echoes of “Gotch’ya!” In one ugly spot, Sparrow pulls a mutiny prank that gets an innocent man executed (by flamethrower!) at the hands of Blackbeard. Sparrow just shrugs it off. The scene is all kinds of wrong, bad for Jack and the series.

No scene is more boring and overlong than an early sword fight between Depp and Cruz, shot in pitch dark and from angles so unpleasant and haphazard, even a child would know we are watching stunt doubles piss about in a second-unit action scene. The once-rousing “Pirates” music by Klaus Badelt, Depp’s comedic timing, and the way he once slipped in and out of the action like an armed drunken court jester, is all off, as is the supernatural kitsch. We get zombie pirates, massive ships (the Black Pearl!) shrunken and captured in rum bottles, and voodoo magic. None of it is explained, and all of it reeks like half-assed script ideas abandoned whilst cameras rolled.

Rush returns (again!) as Barbossa, but that joyously evil glimmer he showed in “Black Pearl” is gone. Rush is here for the paycheck and the vacation in Central America, same as Depp. Having seen Depp slump through “Rum Diary,” I’m not too shocked, but Rush is usually above that. The first film played like a wild card gag, while “Stranger” lacks strangeness and magic, it is a lifeless bore, so dark (and in useless 3-D) I thought the big-screen TV we recently purchased was off kilter.

A fifth (!) “Pirates” is in the works, but I hope it’s a chest never opened. Beyond McShane and employing hundreds of CGI geeks and model makers, this third sequel (that hurts typing that again) has no reason to exist other than to have made hordes of money. (Which it sadly did.) Jump the shark? Jump off the plank. Captain Jack should quit the sea, and retire. To the ocean floor. Black Pearl: A On Stranger Tides: C-

The Rum Diary (2011)

I discovered something about myself not too far into “The Rum Diary,” the latest gonzo tale by and about journalist/novelist/debaucherist Hunter S. Thompson, who never met an alcoholic drink or illicit drug he didn’t like. Correction, I learned something about Johnny Depp. He’s the star here. See, I have grown tired of Depp as an actor.

After watching “Pirates of the Caribbean: Are they Still Making These Things?,” I realized he no longer is an ace actor game at playing emotionally aloof rascals who involve themselves in dangerous games, but standoff at a safe distance. He has become an emotionally aloof actor involving himself in big films, but stands off at a safe distance. “The Tourist” more than fits that bill. His characters are no longer the ones who don’t give a shit, now it’s Depp himself.

Here, a journalism/discovery-of-self drama set in 1960 Puerto Rico from a HST novel, he plays Paul Kemp, a failed novelist who gets mixed up in a dying newspaper rag (headed by Richard Jenkins) and a corrupt real estate deal (headed by Aaron Eckhart), and must dig himself out. Between hits of rum and mescaline drops.

Depp lazily walks all over the film blasé style, hiding behind sunglasses, rather than the Captain Jack eye liner, and making jokes about mermaids (too soon) and dishing out that “Whoa, can you believe this?” double jerk take reaction he does without end. (He seems only jazzed by Tim Burton films.) Paul is supposed to be enraged by film’s end, but he barely ever registers a pulse. Ink and rage? Zzzzz. When the plot’s air leaks out of the bag and Paul leaves the scene with a defeated shrug, we have to rely on an end credit’s title scroll to tell us, “No, really, this Kemp guy is important! He did things!” From the sights on screen, I would never have guessed it. Not in 1,000 tries.

As the sexy femme fatale that messes with Kemp’s head and other body parts, Amber Heard is the only pulsating person on screen, seconded by Michael Rispoli as an overweight photojournalist comic foil, and the only guy on screen with a heart. They are the rum shots in this watered down drink. C+

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Tim Burton films always have wild visuals to make any film fan stare in awe, as is the case with “Alice in Wonderland,” his take on the famous Lewis Carroll story of a girl lost in a strange world that only an opium habit could fuel. Burton + Carroll: It’s a marriage made in cinema heaven. But this take isn’t about young Alice’s trip down the rabbit hole. No. It’s about angst-filled teen Alice (Mia Wasikowska) re-falling down the rabbit hole to re-meet Rabbit, the Dweedle twins, the cat … you get the point. Johnny Depp is the Mad Hatter, whacked hair and crazy colored Elijah Wood eyes. Helena Bonham Carter is the Queen of Hearts, a head big enough to block sunlight. Anne Hathaway is the White Queen, who walks around with her hands up in the air. Um, why exactly? It’s all so much, and yet so little. There is no glistening-eye, heart-piercing wonder here, as in film gods “Beatlejuice” and “Edward Scissorhands.” Danny Elfman provides the film’s best asset, a music score to die for, and paint and draw and write and dream by. B-

The Tourist (2010)

How can a romantic crime caper set in Venice and starring superstars Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie as would-be lovers go wrong? That’s the real mystery of “The Tourist.” Because there’s not much in the subpar-Hitchcock plot, credited to the three brilliant guys who gave us, respectively, “The Usual Suspects,” “Gosford Park” and “The Lives of Others.” There’s an obligatory helping of Last-Minute Climax Reveal, but it’s more latter-day M. Night Shyamalan than anything in, say, “Charade.”

Look, I’m an absolute movie snob, but when I read the reviews to “Tourist,” I thought, “Guys, have some fun.” I wanted to like this. Jolie. Depp. Paris. Italy. This movie had instant classic written all over. But, damn, it never takes off, not even a bump, even after arriving in Venice for boat chases down canals, raging grandpa gangsters (Steve Berkoff), and more dumb cops than 42 “Keystone Kops” shorts.

“Tourist” gives us the genre basics -- an exotic woman and the common man go on the run from killers and police alike in a beautiful locale, falling in love in the process -– and fumbles fast. Aside from the ending I saw off the bat, the problem here is in the actual casting, and how the characters play out. Boring.

Jolie is stiff and strangely dull as a wealthy English aristocrat, lathered in more makeup than Tim Curry wore in “Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Depp, in a surprise move, under-hands his performance as an American math teacher who’d rather stick his nose in a book than watch the Italian countryside glide by. He’s a wallflower. This must be some kind of joke, on the part of Depp, but only he is laughing.

Now, in these films, the couple is always supposed to meet cute and exchange banter that works on three levels –- mysterious, comedic and sexy. But, here, it’s flat month-old soda. The gut-ripping dump in “The Social Network” had more wit, and that was a heart crusher. See Frank Sinatra and Janet Leigh rip the world open in the classic “The Manchurian Candidate.” That’s a train meet-up. The talk here is cheap.

Now for that last-minute plot twist: 1) It pissed me off because I guessed it, and 2) It requires Jolie to be stupid. She may be many things on film: Kick ass, mean, tragic, and occasionally overly hysterical as in “The Changeling.” But stupid? Never. The script is insulting to her and us. One of the co-writers and director of this faux farce is Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who made “The Lives of Others.” That film -- shocking, dark and beautiful -- is one of the best films of this past decade. But if this signals his Hollywood career, then back to Europe he must go.

This isn’t a total dud. It’s a great-looking film. The costumes and art direction are some of the best of the year, and Venice, a great city to photograph, is splendid in big-screen glory. It also has Timothy Dalton doing his classic piss-ant Brit act, whcih always is a treat. But, if you’ve ever been to Venice, you know the water in those canals stinks. And at 5, it gets high. People tip-toe around and jump over puddles and carry children to avoid the fetid mess. That’s the best advice I can give here. Run. Hide. Avoid. C+

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009)

The most shocking scene of Terry Gilliam’s dark, nightmarish “let’s make a deal” film comes early: Heath Ledger is first seen hanging by his neck from a bridge during a miserable London night. Nearly two years after his death, Ledger’s mere presence still inspires awe. But, here, it’s for all the wrong reasons. Ledger plays Tony, a man with apparent amnesia found in his awful state by the daughter (Lily Cole) and employee (Andrew Garfield) of the centuries-old, traveling storyteller Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer). The group’s find is lucky, as Tony provides a boost to their business, centuries past its expiration date. Hounding the group is Mr. Nick (Tom Waits), Satan himself, who’s the card dealer to the not-so-good doctor’s addiction to betting. The film, like any Gilliam treat, is a wondrous shifting, warping Rubik’s Cube. Yet, Ledger died mid-production, so in the alternate world scenes, his Tony is played by Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell. Fascinating concept, but hurtful. As tragedy smashes down (happy endings are not guaranteed), the film loses dramatic payoff as the final Tony just isn’t the Tony we've come to love. It isn't Ledger. B

Public Enemies (2009)

I had high hopes for Michael Mann’s Public Enemies (2009). Maybe too high. But he’s one of the best directors out there: “Heat” (1995), “The Insider” (1999), “Manhunter” (1986) and “Last of the Mohicans” (1992) all are grade-A entertainment.

So, I’m left perplexed at this new gangster film from the great Mann and his brilliant cinematographer Dante Spinotti (who lensed the above Mann films, plus the wonderful “L.A. Confidential”). And how could it go wrong: The film follows famed bank robber and killer John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) as he does his thing, one or two steps ahead of the law (Christian Bale as FBI agent Melvin Purvis and a near-unrecognizable Billy Crudup as J. Edgar Hoover).

The sound, the costumes, the look of this film all demand Oscars, and if won, rightfully deserve them. The shoot outs have the visceral boldness of “Heat,” although the shoot-outs here still can’t match the jaw-dropping stunts of that classic DeNiro/Pacino caper. The acting is tops for the most part, although I never felt Johnny Depp’s Dillinger is a deadly sum-a-bitch to be feared.

The deal is we never get inside the head of Dillinger - - why’d he do all this? -- or Purvis (Bale is stoic and great). What “Heat” had, and “Public Enemies” doesn’t, is the absolute dangerous joy of mastermind criminals doing what they do best, and the lawmen who dedicate themselves to crashing the party. The shock of watching a man who steals and kills for a living, and laughs at the thought of his own death, ought to kick you in the stomach while it dazzles your eyes. “Public Enemies” merely gooses. B