6) Finding Neverland
It’s always nice to see an actor take a break from the more outlandish and delicious characters and dive into something more understated yet just as savory and sweet. Johnny Depp became an Oscar nominee two years in a row for his depiction of Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie. It’s a lovely little film that received some acclaim and a lot of award recognition when it was released, but has since largely disappeared from the cultural consciousness, like Peter Pan himself perhaps.
What might be most interesting about the movie today is seeing Johnny Depp playing a character that isn’t completely batshit crazy. It almost seems novel, in that way. It’s easy to forget, even though we saw it in characters like Edward Scissorhands and in a less eccentric sense Gilbert Grape, that Depp has a certain delicateness to his performances that is executed with such precision that it often goes unnoticed or unappreciated. That’s the case with Finding Neverland.
7) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Depp and Burton were back at it in 2005, working together on two films, the gorgeous and grotesque Corpse Bride, and the somewhat polarizing remake Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The movie itself was deeply polarizing, as should be expected from a reinterpretation of such a beloved classic movie, but Johnny Depp’s performance as Willy Wonka was especially unnerving, deciding to, like the majority of the movie, really amp up the creepiness factor. People went so far as to draw comparisons of Depp’s portrayal to Michael Jackson, which may or may not have been the authorial intent of the thing.
But overall, I think I like the movie, and especially the Wonka performance. The 1970s version has elements of creepiness that it sort of glosses over. I mean, seriously Gene Wilder, you played a guy who was inviting children to join him in his secluded warehouse, and you think Depp made him too creepy? It’s meant to differentiate itself from the previous version, and it does so to great effect. If people find it off-putting and hard to take, I find that somehow more comforting than people who take little issue with the friendly and only somewhat temperamental Willy Wonka we had come to know previously. Depp went full creep. Power to him.