1990 · Tim Burton · 105 min · Fantasy
Edward Scissorhands is Tim Burton's most personal and emotionally resonant film, a modern fairy tale about an outsider that uses its fantastical premise to say something deeply true about acceptance, conformity, and the cruelty of communities that only welcome you as long as you're useful.
1993 · Martin Scorsese · 139 min · Drama / Romance / Historical
The Age of Innocence is Martin Scorsese directing with a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer, and the result is one of the most precisely crafted period dramas in American cinema. Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Winona Ryder inhabit a world of suffocating social ritual where the most devastating acts of violence are delivered through dinner invitations and seating arrangements. The pacing will test anyone expecting Scorsese's usual kinetic energy, and the emotional restraint of the story can feel like watching passion slowly suffocate under good manners. For those willing to meet it on its own terms, the film reveals itself as one of Scorsese's most emotionally devastating works.
1988 · Tim Burton · 92 min · Comedy
Beetlejuice is the film where Tim Burton's sensibility crystallized into something audiences could rally around. Michael Keaton's manic, improvisation-fueled performance as the Ghost with the Most is the centerpiece, but the film's real achievement is building an entire aesthetic vocabulary that Burton would spend the rest of his career refining.