1994: Year in Review

Tim Burton's zany comedic biopic is a great film - about (arguably) the worst filmmaker that ever lived. Johnny Depp stars as Edward D. Wood, Jr., a naive aspiring director whose latest stage production has gained a bad review in which only the costumes were given a modicum of praise. One day, he hears about a Z-grade production house making a thinly-veiled true story about a man that changed his sex. Wood comes back with his first "hit" screenplay - "Glen or Glenda?," and directs himself in the starring role (Wood had a penchant for dressing in womens' clothing). This is much to the chagrin of his aspiring ingenue girlfriend Dolores Fuller (Sarah Jessica Parker), whose about had it with Wood and his growing circle of misfits, perverts (including a low-key brilliant Bill Murray as transsexual-in-the-making Bunny Breckinridge) and freaks (his ensemble cast would soon include Vampira and Tor Johnson, the Swedish wrestler played here by Lisa Marie and George "The Animal" Steele, respectively). Fate soon connects Wood with childhood icon-turned-morphine addict Bela Lugosi (a magnificent, Oscar-winning Martin Landau) and his career is set - the film covers much of the production of films such as "Bride of the Atom" (which became "Bride of the Monster") and "Plan 9 from Outer Space" (funded by the Baptist Church as a fundraiser for their films about the 12 Apostles, it was originally went by a more "offensive title" of "Graverobbers from Outer Space"!). Burton's film, stunningly photographed in stark black and white, is a throwback to the time of Z-grade horror and science-fiction films, and the results are magical. Depp gets deep into the skin of the superficial cineaste Wood, whose aspirations to be an auteur ironically hit a fever pitch when bad director met great director in an inspirational bar conversation with Orson Welles (an uncanny Vincent D'Onofrio). The acceptance Wood never found professionally was even made up for when he met a girl who loved him for him (Patricia Arquette). This is perhaps one of the oddest, funniest and (in its way) weirdly inspiring films about show business ever made. It's also one of the best.

Michael Tolkin's dry, savage, sardonically-witty satire is yet another emotional X-ray of the morally and spiritually bankrupt in search of a change. Peter (Peter Weller) and Katherine Witner (Judy Davis) are a couple of upper-middle class L.A. yuppies living in a dreamland of opulence with no center. Peter is a show biz agent who "used to be the guy people wanted to be around" and now can't bring in more money than he's payed per year; he quits when his boss (Corbin Bernsen) lets his criticism of Peter go one step too far. Katherine seems to work in some semblence of high finance, but is losing clients as well. They both have affairs, and before long will be sleeping with different people in the same house. They've got about 30 days worth of money left, and then homelessness begins to sink in as a very real possibility. What can they do? They consult a "spiritual teacher" (Patrick Bauchau) who asks them what they're "good at." "Shopping and talking," Katherine admits with cold, cynical honesty. Almost inevitably, this translates to an idea: They'll open a trendy boutique designed to cater to the needs of the hip aristocracy. The name? Hipocracy! The opening party is somewhat of a success, though you can see the embarassment of a friend (Patricia Heaton) at paying $433 for a belt, but it's not long before the walls come crashing down around them. They could turn to Peter's father (Adam West), an aging, wealthy swinger for help; or could they? Soon, they'll be consulting a bald Pagan psychic woman, and many another "new age guru" to find a direction. The ending is sort of inevitable. Michael Tolkin has literally made a career of painting frighteningly vivid and accurate portraits of the morally and spirtually vaccuous. He previously wrote and directed "The Rapture" (1991) with Mimi Rogers as a woman prone to promiscuous and kinky sex, only to turn to sudden spirituality as a cure-all; that one ended with an Apocalypse of her own creation. Then there was his viciously satirical screenplay, adapted from his own novel, for Robert Altman's "The Player" (1992) with Tim Robbins as a corrupt Hollywood studio executive who gets tangled in a darkly hilarious noir plot. With this film, Tolkin is back to his no-holds-barred examinations of the search for spirituality as a quick fix to the problems of the morally vacant. However, where as his previous directing effort more or less seemed to take its story and its implications as seriously as it could, here he seems to be more in the biting, ink-black mood of "The Player." Davis and Weller play the Witners as smart, stubborn, clueless; they are utterly unaware of what it means to "get by" and they joke that they might kill themselves if they ever had to "really work for a living"; one indeed wonders where they would be nowadays. Tolkin's film is dry as the desert, merciless and brilliant at seeing with absolute clarity and complete brutal honesty the predicament of his characters, the type of people they are, and the inevitability of the potential solution to their problems. All's well that end's well.