Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
The mostly true story of the legendary "worst director of all time", who, with the help of his strange friends, filmed countless B-movies without ever becoming famous or successful.
Ed Wood is a loving, meticulously crafted black-and-white portrait of Hollywood's fringes, shot by Stefan Czapsky in gorgeous period-faithful monochrome that earned the film an Oscar. Johnny Depp delivers a uniquely earnest, exuberant performance, and Martin Landau's Oscar-winning turn as Bela Lugosi is one of the decade's finest pieces of character work. The film's novelty is considerable — Burton's warm, non-ironic celebration of a talentless dreamer is genuinely singular in tone and conception, neither mocking nor hagiographic. The plot, while engaging, is episodic and relatively thin, content to string together anecdotes rather than build dramatic momentum. The ending, while emotionally resonant in its bittersweet optimism, doesn't quite land with the weight the journey deserves.