Ed Wood (1994)

Don't expect a camp bitchfest from Ed Wood, even if it is a biopic about a cross-dressing Hollywood filmmaker -- he relishes fluffy Angora sweaters and strappy high heels -- with an unrivaled reputation for making cut-rate crap. Director Tim Burton, a former Disney animator with a famous sympathy for freaks (Batman, Beetlejuice, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Edward Scissorhands), doesn't do the expected. It's a cherishable trait that he shares with Scissorhands star Johnny Depp, who wriggles into a…

Tim Burton's homage to shitty filmmaking will be remembered less for Johnny Depp's unflinchingly perky turn in the title role (which would have been better appreciated had Jon Lovitz not stolen it, um, years earlier) than for Bill Murray's arrival as a complex character actor. In Ed Wood's epilogue, where Murray's would-be transsexual wordlessly regards a troupe of Mexican balladeers, he reveals himself to be demure, lascivious, tender, seedy, elegant and a failed romantic -- all in the space of…