Rating: 
Summary: A Loving Tribute to Ineptitude
Review: Why make a movie about the man universally regarded as the worst filmmaker of all time?Well, simply because the word "worst" does not even adequately describe Ed Wood. He was the absolute, undisputable worst, unrivalled in his mindless disregard for decent production values, coherent storytelling, credible scriptwriting, and competent acting. If he were just "the worst," he would be no more than a mere footnote in cinematic history. But by single-handedly redefining the standards of ineptitude, Wood achieved that rare status of lovable loser. I mean, really, you have to admire someone who approaches his craft with so much grit and determination and so little talent. It takes an A-grade cast to bring to life this story of Z-grade moviemaking. And we have one. Johnny Depp delivers a performance of fire in the title role, giving us a lot of insight into the character that Ed Wood was. Martin Landau (in an Oscar-winning performance) doesn't just portray Bela Lugosi. By golly, he becomes Lugosi, almost convincing us that the horror movie legend was resurrected for this project. Sarah Jessica Parker, Jeffrey Jones, Bill Murray, George "The Animal" Steele, and Lisa Marie comprise the ensemble cast that portrays a motley crew of rank amateurs. Think about it, these people had to re-enact the shooting of Wood's movies, looking serious but coming out funny, and doing all that with a straight face.Try that, folks. Appreciate too, the film's most memorable line. At the premiere night of Plan 9 From Outer Space, Wood declares with unqualified conviction: "This is it. This is the one I'll be remembered for." Whether you're a fan of bad movies or not, you simply have to see Ed Wood. It's not often that a film comes along that makes you like a man who so admirably succeeded at being a failure.
Rating:
Summary: Offbeat film of an offbeat man
Review: This is one of the best biopics I've seen. The true story of Ed Wood, Hollywood's worst director. Tim Burton captures the look and feel of the 1950's perfectly. Johnny Depp is excellent in his role as Wood. His optimism and chirpy good nature reminded me of Ned Flanders, another man who has total faith in the future. Martin Landau is superb as the once-great horror star Bela Lugosi. Ed Wood always knew he would be remembered, but probably not in the way he expected. In this film we see his misfortunes, trials and disappointments, and can't help laughing. Ed Wood tried to overcome adversity, and mostly failed. Some of the problems were not of his making, he needed money to finance his movies and was open to exploitation by those with their own vision. Or the people around him were clownish amateurs, not quite understanding what Wood wanted. All in all, this is a great movie about the making of three very terrible movies.
Rating: 
Summary: Burton cares.
Review: This is Tim Burton saying that no matter how many people don't care about B-horror pictures, he does, and showing us that there can be poetry in them. "Ed Wood" is a bio-pic of real-life B-hollywood director Edward D Wood Jr, done in the style of one of his pictures - unexplained framing devices, like Criswell's introduction, noirish lighting for no apparent reason, and incidental performances by actors who look like they've just shown up and not been told what part they're supposed to be playing. These last, like the doctor in Lugosi's hospital, are provided for colour, but are an example of the balance struck in this picture. It has the expression of a comedy - yes, we're asked to laugh at Wood's haphazard way of making pictures, and we can laugh about how terrible the pictures are, but beneath the comedy a great truth is found, and a message Tim Burton is passionate about is expressed. The heart of Ed Wood is really in the character of "washed-up" Dracula star Bela Lugosi (played to a tee and rewarded with an Oscar, by Martin Landau). Twenty years after Dracula, Lugosi's career was over. Nobody cared about him. It was like, as is Hollywood lore, you're only as good as the last thing you've done. And whatever classic roles or films you may have done, it all counts for nothing if you do a bad picture. This theme of the cruel way Hollywood forgets its greatest talents is also why the name Orson Welles keeps cropping up. Its not because Welles made pictures like Ed Wood's, its because, like with Lugosi, Welles's having made what is considered to be the greatest picture of all time, Citizen Kane, counted for nothing in Hollywood. If your pictures didn't make money, you were useless - so Hollywood did everything it could to keep him from working - RKO sabotaged his Ambersons, and eventually he could not get backing for many great pictures in Hollywood that, and here there is another analogy with Ed Wood, he raised money for himself and made independently. It is this determination to succeed, and persist in your work no matter what others think of it that makes Ed Wood (thanks to a terrific fun performance from Johnny Depp) such an important and admirable character. You can't help liking Ed, for his irrepressible spirit and optimism. It was Ed Wood who gave Lugosi another chance, the content of which Burton romanticises and focuses on in his film. Ed Wood cared about Lugosi's work - Wood didn't care about popular opinion which said Lugosi was "washed up," whatever that meant. Wood had seen Dracula, and Lugosi was a legend, and that was all that mattered. Wood gave him the chance to be in pictures again, symbolising the appreciation of great works, not recent moneymakers. Burton and Martin Landau give the legend of Bela Lugosi his last great performance, turning him into the tragic figure to end all tragic figures. His performance of his "I have no home speech" set to stirring, haunting music, on the steps of the hospital - his performance of the infamous flower-smelling scene from Plan Nine from Outer Space, the last footage Lugosi ever shot - all have the tone of appreciating a legend, giving Lugosi his due, saying who gives a [woop] if Hollywood doesn't remember, we remember.
Rating:
Summary: Good Movie about a horrible film-maker
Review: Ed Wood, Jr. is more beloved than reviled as the "creative mind" behind such grade-z movies as "Plan 9 From Outer Space", "Glen or Glenda". Though it's generally accepted that Wood wasn't playing it straight with his horrible scripts ("he's been killed, murdered....and somebody's responsible!"; "Future events like these will affect you in the future!"), unbelievable special effects and nonesensical plots, this film slightly suggests that Wood actually bought into his own nonsense. Here, Johnny Depp (is there anything he can't do?) plays the beloved but infamous Ed, a WWII vet, failed movie maker and transvestite. Playing Ed as if doing an extended Jon Lovitz impression (his lines delivered all high-pitched and non-stop), Depp's Ed is mostly innocuous and guiless (his genuine belief in the implausible predictions of self-proclaimed seer, Criswell, are a hoot) and incapable of seeing his own sheer lunacy. The script uses "Glen" and "Plan 9" as bookends on Ed's checkered career - with the first film marking his collaboration with the then well-faded horror star, Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau), and the second marking a sort of tribute to the star who died before its completion. Director Tim Burton stocks the film with a well-rounded cast - Bill Murray as transvestite "Bunny" Breckenridge, Jeff Jones as Criswell, Sarah Jessica Parker as Ed's long suffering girl friend, Dolores, Lisa Marie as "Vampira" and George Steele as Tor Johnson - that's a lot of fun, but doesn't do much with them. Bill Murray seems at times the saddest transvestite in history, mulling his paltry earnings from Ed's flicks to pay for his "procedure" while Jones' Criswell puts a damper on things when he makes all too clear how he invents his predictions. Instead, Burton's attentions are reserved for Ed and Bela, with Landau turning in a performance that's in turns hysterical (when revealing his hatred for arch-rival Boris Karloff), heartbreaking and terrifying (the forgotten star dies trying to kick a heavy heroin habit). Even so, the script doesn't stay consistent, with the emotional and humours highs isolated in their own scenes. The script reaches a depth of sorrow and horror when revealing Lugosi's profound suffering in de-tox, yet only briefly. (The script dangles the question of how well the dying star recognized the inanity of Woods' work). In other moments, the film hints at other real-life horrors like Ed's war experiences, but much of the film is actually shy of risk. Much of the conflict is between Ed and his backers - mostly evangelicals conned into thinking they were financing a religious picture and slowly realize Ed's true caliber as a film maker. Ed fights back to preserve his artistic vision without having to prove what his vision is or whether he even has one. His flagging self-confidence is restored by a chance encounter with Orson Welles (Vincent DoNofrio, also an underappreciated Hollywood fixture, his lines dubbed by the same guy who voices "Brain" on "Pinky and the Brain"). The more famed director is about to start work on a troubled epic of his own which, though never named, will be instantly recognizable to film students as "A Touch of Evil" ("Can you imagine Charlton Heston as a Mexican Cop?", Welles laments). Plunging ahead, the film works to the climax of Ed's career- the infamous "Plan 9 from Outer Space"! With Ed's trademark horrible special effects, unintelligible plot and insultingly poor script, "Plan" is almost guaranteed cult-status. Burton only recreates some of the scenes, so the last few minutes of the film plays like a montage of SNL skits, with Ed almost crying as he savors each frame. Leaving Ed before the credits roll on his "masterpiece", we never see Ed's lowly ends, his own substance abuse problems or the more clearly horrible films that marked his latter years. Burton never confronts this and misses an ironic motherlode - whether the ridiculous fantasy of Ed's pictures were supposed to be scary, or whether in seeming scary but so ineptly so, they were actually meant to symbolize a safer world than the one he experienced for real.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: Ed Wood (Johnny Depp), is a positive film enthusiast without strong skills in story telling, yet driven to tell the audience his story. Ed's stories display little interest in perfection as they openly display imperfections which eliminate the magically believable moment. However, it is these imperfections that Tim Burton highlights in Ed Wood where he displays Ed's imperfections and peculiarities to bring out the human side of Ed, which is what makes him lovable. In filmmaking Ed might have received an F as he was awarded "worst director ever", but as a human he should get an A. Tim Burton decided to film Ed Wood in black and white which vividly enhances the contrast in Ed's character. In addition, the performance by the cast is outstanding as they add phony mood to the film, but it works like magic in this brilliant story.
Rating:
Summary: burtons valentine to an outsider artist and true auteur
Review: every outsider artist i know that has seen this movie, loves it.
thats because wood was the patron saint of outsider artists (john waters used to be another one).
wood was also an auteur.
the fact that his movies are 'superifcially' awful is inconsequential.
i think a key in this film is when the baptist producers start yelling at him for making a movie which had numerous loopholes in logic.
wood defends his 'ineptitude' with 'its not about the details, its about the big picture'.
in many ways he was very right.
wood created a delightfully wacky, perverse ambience in everything he did.
and some of his films dont measure up to others.
night of the ghouls, for instance, doesnt have the wacky, fast paced wierdness of plan nine.
but woods personality was enforced upon all of his movies.
and, are his movies really bad?
well, in the sense of a narrative, logical piece of entertainment; yes.
but, his movies are amazingly entertaining for their eccentricities.
and a movie that is sooooo bad that its hilariousley entertaining is actually a far better movie than something like, say; 'willow' which is just simply bad.
as a matter of fact i'll take the personal stamp of wood over the compliant, lack of any style ron howard type any day.
and as for auteurs;
tim burton (who seems to be one of the most wildly uneven directors out there) is in step at least with wood in making everything he does recognizably his.
bless him for this film, which desperately needs a dvd release.
Rating:
Summary: A Modern Masterpiece!
Review: First of all, I will tell you that I was raised in Hollywood in the 1950s and our upstairs neighbor really was the "Great Criswell" depicted in this film.. so I should be more critical than anyone concerning this movie's authenticity, and it is a perfect depiction in my view. This masterpiece by film maker Tim Burton is not only a sensitive, funny and wonderous portrait of Ed Wood, Jr. and his pals, but also a loving tribute to the spirit of the last "Great Days of Old Hollywood". The performances by Johnny Depp and the supporting cast is perfection. Visually, this appropriately black and white film takes on the look of those low budget films Ed and many others were making at the time. Even the opening credits AND Howard Shore's INCREDIBLE music score feels accurate to the time and is a joy to hear. I was very honored when staying at the LeParc Hotel in West Hollywood in early March of this year and happened to be in the lobby when I spotted Martin Landau. I seized the opportunity to walk over and tell Mr. Landau how "fabulous" he was in his role as the late Bela Lugosi..... he smiled and kindly said "Thank you so very much!!"... and his performance IS INCREDIBLE... enough that he won the Oscar for his performance in this film. Landau's characterization of Lugosi alone will be worth the price of the DVD when Disney decides to release it (soon I hope!!). This wonderful film HAS BEEN on my personal "TOP 10 Greatest Movies of All Time" list since I first saw it 10 years ago. A modern masterpiece!!
Rating:
Summary: Those bastards at Universal!!!
Review: As you may notice I did quote Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood, Tim Burton's masterpiece.I totally agree with him, I can't believe that it was released Big Fish in DVD, and Ed wood was censored by Unversal and Buenavista.
I do have the VHS, that's highly recommendable for all of us that are waiting for the DVD.
Ed Wood, tim burton's tribute to this un-acclaimed director, tarred by Johnny Depp (Edward Scissorshands)as Ed Wood, Martin Landau (Sleepy Hollow) as Bela Lugosi and Sarah Michelle Geller (Sex and the City) as Ed's principal love interest, along with Bill Murray (Lost in Translation) As Ed's best friend.
I say it: Tim's Best Movie is Ed Wood.
Why?
It's fuuny and it's deep, it makes you think about Hollywood's Studios.
It's like a behind scenes look inside Hollywood. Well, I hope this will be released soon. See you.
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant movie for only the brilliant minded.
Review: This movie is awesome. I've watched it 30+ times and it's still great. I'm very sad that they decided to not put it on DVD. Well they did but they pulled it. I want this DVD so bad. Well.... What are you gonna' do? Eisner needs to smartin' up, he's ruining Buena Vista!
Rating:
Summary: Hi, I'm Edward D. Wood Jr...
Review: I just watched this movie for the first time last night at 22 years of age and was amazed. I like it even more thinking about it the next day. Quite a stunning film about Ed Wood, who I was honestly unaware of in Hollywood history. Great performances, great characters, story-line was generally good for a biography type piece. Okay, yes, Johnny Depp proved that he has acting abilities that no actor should be capable of having. I could barely...barely, find an ounce of him in this part. What is interesting is that you can still "see" Johnny when he takes on his roles like they ARE him, yet they aren't like him. But essentially they really are him. Difficult to explain this feeling but this movie truly made me see that. Truly great performances by the other magnificent actors too. Bill Murray held his natural sense-of-humor without acting like he has one, didn't even recognize Vincent D'Onofrio as Orsen Wells, and admired Bela aka Landeu's perfromance tremendously(sp?)
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