A drama centered on the awakening of the painter Margaret Keane, her phenomenal success in the 1950s, and the subsequent legal difficulties she had with her husband, who claimed credit for her works in the 1960s.
Ever since 2000, Tim Burton has had a sort of “one-out-of-three” trend going, where only one out of every three of his movies made in the last 14 years has done anything to impress me. I enjoyed Big Fish, Sweeney Todd and Frankenweenie (though admittedly not as much as his pre-2000 work), but was wholly unimpressed with the likes of Planet of the Apes, Corpse Bride, Dark Shadows and Alice in Wonderland. Thankfully, after those last two films turned out to be stinky, we’ve arrived at Burton’s latest one-out-of-three project: Big Eyes. It looks like the least Burton-esque movie Burton has ever done. It’s sort of a biopic, and it doesn’t include Johnny Depp OR Helena Bonham-Carter, which is practically unheard of in Burton-land. But most importantly: it looks interesting. Second most importantly: Christoph Waltz.
Big Eyes comes out December 25, 2014.