Vertical lines and black and white stripes. Sullen expressions and pallid skin tones. Disheveled hair and often handcrafted special effects. There are certain staples and motifs that recur in the works of Tim Burton. So much so that 40 years after his directorial career began, Burtons films remain instantly recognizable and a good gateway to introducing younger audiences to the concept of auteur theory.The singularity of Burtons work has also earned its share of critics and detractors; those who see the repetition of his muses and Gothic fixations as cause for caricature. And to be sure, the one-time Hollywood outsider and Disney outcast spent so much time nestled in the heart of the industrys commercialized bosom that it seemed to influence a decline in Burtons later 21st century output. It was a trend so undeniable that even several of the directors most recent films have seemed to comment on this in the cases of Dumbo and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.Nonetheless, Burton remains an originalan unmistakable talent and voice whos left a major impact on film culture that crosses generations, genres, and even decades of fashion. Burtons earned his place in cinema history, and were taking the time to look at some of his greatest and worst contributions. (*Editors Note: This list will only pertain to feature-length movies Burton directed or co-directed. So no A Nightmare Before Christmas or the Frankenweenie and Vincent shorts.)20. Alice in Wonderland (2010)We begin this list with the film that in retrospect stands at a crossroads in Burtons filmography. While some dismiss all the movies the director made after the year 2000, well contend that the filmmaker has realized some of his most personal and poignant visions on this side of Y2K. But the movie which marked real decline is this soulless and insipid studio product made to order for Disney. To this day, Burton appears to be trying to climb out of a hole that started here.Also a runaway success that spurred on the modern glut of the Mouse Houses live-action remakes, Burtons Alice in Wonderland can at least claim that it doesnt mechanically recreate animated moments from superior animated films decades prior. Instead Alice 2010 is the first film Burton made that felt like it mechanically recreated the audience expectation of what a Tim Burton movie should be. Tweedledee and Tweedledum are in Beetlejuice stripes; Johnny Depp is mugging at the camera with black circles under his eyes; and wonderland is inexplicably overcast by a sickly gray cloud. Still, Burton was forced to humor studio instincts that insisted on a giant Lord of the Rings-like battle climax and post-Avatar 3D gimmicks, appropriate for a late 2000s production. It made Disney a billion dollars but cost the director so much more by setting him down the wrong path.19. Planet of the Apes (2001)If Alice in Wonderland was the film which revealed Burtons worst instincts, his Planet of the Apes remake was a preview of coming attractions. After a string of artistic and/or commercial innovations within the studio system of the 1990s, Burton hit his first wall in this redo of the Rod Serling and Charlton Heston sci-fi classic. The filmmaker took the studio notes on this one toohow else does one explain the casting of Mark Wahlberg as a scientist?and did his best to make them look at least visually evocative, but none of the thorny social commentary or pointed political subtext of the 1968 original survived in this surface level spectacle.Even so, we must contend there is quite a bit of spectacle to enjoy thanks to fantastic makeup special effects courtesy of Rick Baker; Tim Roth is giving a tremendous performance as a simian dictator hopping around the ponderous sets; and a spark of Burtons more peculiar instincts finds kindling whenever the film flirts with a romance between Wahlberg and Helena Bonham Carters chimpanzee activist. Studio interests prevented Planet of the Apes from pursuing so bizarre a romantic detour, but its telling Burton and Carter had no such qualms off-screen as this film started their professional, and personal, partnership.18. Dumbo (2019)As Burtons second (and almost assuredly final) Disney remake, Dumbo is kind of remarkable due to the sense of self-loathing that percolates just beneath the surface. Here is a movie about a sensitive, talented individualin this case a CGI elephantbeing tormented and exploited to the point of despair by a capitalistic vulture. While the screenplay by Ehren Kruger is just going through the motions, somewhere along the way it clearly became personal for Burton who ends his movie by having Dumbo literally burn down a theme park run by a predatory businessman (Michael Keaton), who has put his name and face everywhere while snuffing out the light in Dumbos eyes.These flashes of subversion and biting the hand that feeds makes Dumbo fleetingly interesting, and those sad cartoon eyes beneath a smear of pancake clown makeup will always pull the heartstrings, but these are just momentary distractions from an otherwise vacant corporate product. Fortunately though, the films seething anger with itself has seemed to signal a turn for Burton back toward greener (or in his case moonlit) pastures.17. Dark Shadows (2012)Dark Shadows is the first genuinely interesting failure on this list if only because of how much Burton clearly wanted for it to succeed. The director has cited the odd and wonderful daytime soap opera this film is based on as one of the formative pop culture relics of his youth. He places the Jonathan Frid vampire melodrama right up there with Hammer Horror movies and listening to Ozzy Osbourne and the Carpenters. He unfortunately tried to meld all of those childhood touchstones and detritus into a single madcap comedy that never comes together.In isolation, there is much to admire about Dark Shadows. The intentionally stilted performances by talented actors like Michelle Pfeiffer and Eva Green lovingly mimics the bigness of daytime television; Bruno Delbonnels candlelit cinematography is gorgeous; and the entire first act where Bella Heathcotes Victoria Winters arrives at Collinwood to the sounds of Nights in White Satin evokes a Gothic reverie. Yet this one mightve benefitted from trying to be more Sleepy Hollow than Beetlejuice. Theres also probably a reason why this featured Johnny Depps last turn in a Burton joint given how phoned in the lead performance is.Join our mailing listGet the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!16. Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children (2016)Theres a charming story at the heart of Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children. It did after all originate as a New York Times bestselling YA novel in 2011 (albeit more as an evocative picture book than traditional narrative); and this film was penned by the terrific screenwriter Jane Goldman. Be that as it may, the film version is bedeviled by the unmistakable scent of a studio attempting to reverse engineer the appeal of its X-Men franchise. Hence picking up a book about another school for gifted youngsters, just like the mutants and Wizarding World of Harry Potter before this. Miss Peregrines story about ghostly peculiar children trapped in a time loop after being killed in the Blitz thus becomes a superhero movie where youngins show off their powers to new recruit Jake Portman (Asa Butterfield).Burton was hired to offer his visual flourish to the material, which he does with aplomb in certain sequences like when Ella Purnells waifish Emma Bloom floats the length of an oak tree to help a squirrel, or when the director casts his then-muse Eva Green as the titular headmistress. One can feel the film revel in Greens devilish smile as she turns into a falcon. Other highlights include a winking homage to the army of skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts (1963). Alas, the sum is lesser than the parts.15. Big Eyes (2014)One of the first enjoyable, if middling, entries on this list, Big Eyes was supposed to be something of a restoration for the folks involved. It marked the first collaboration between the director and the screenwriters of one of his best films, Ed Woods Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszweski; also like Ed Wood, Big Eyes is a biopic that aims to give gravitas to a mid-20th century curio others would immediately dismissed as kitschy (in this case the big eye pop art of Margaret Keane); and it was given the splashy Harvey Weinstein awards season comeback narrative, complete with some of the biggest stars of the early 2010s in Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz.The film ultimately was no Ed Wood, however, nor the Oscar-magnet Weinstein hoped it to be. But like so many of Burtons better films, Big Eyes in its own affable way offered dignity to what others scoffed at including in this case a single mother. To be sure, thats how Waltzs real-life character, Walter Keane, bullied and gaslit Margaret into allowing her second husband to take credit for her artwork in the 1950s and 60s: no one would buy art from a woman, he insisted, much less a divorced mother. So he stole the credit and the fortune until Margaret took it back. The film unpacks their battle with more restrained whimsy than normal for Burton. Perhaps that is why it is fairly forgettable. Still, theres a sincere empathy and affection for Margaret and her dubious paintings. You can tell Burton is acknowledging a kindred spirit.14. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)Another remake, this, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory holds the benefit of feeling redone with purpose by Burton. A lifelong admirer of the works of Roald Dahl, Burton sought to offer a more faithful (and some might say mean-spirited) adaptation of the 1964 childrens novel that was previously, and iconically, adapted in 1971 with Gene Wilder. And to a certain vocal minority of Dahl fans, he succeeded. Burtons Charlie is definitely more faithful to Dahl, beginning with the fact it got the name right (Wilders movie is renamed Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory). The Oompa Loompas also have an air of indentured servitude about them; the children are more intentionally and gleefully punished; and young Charlie Buckett (Freddie Highmore) never breaks the rules.The film is sumptuous to look at, too, with Burtons saturated, candy-colored factory complementing the rich mocha shadings of the various chocolaty props. The production design by Alex McDowell is literal eye-candy. All things being equal though, fidelity to source material can be overrated. The 71 movie is a heartwarming classic in no small part because of Wilders vulnerable performance. Wilder found a way to walk a delicate line between endearing and creepy. Depp boldly attempts to find his own route across that No Mans Land and brazenly models his Wonka after one of the creepiest real-life public figures of the last 50 years, Michael Jackson. But the ultimate result is more unsettling than avuncular. Theres a reason only one of them is considered a classic.13. Corpse Bride (2005)The other Burton effort of 2005 was also a collaboration with director Mike Johnson on the stop-animation cult classic, Corpse Bride. Perhaps after getting too much credit in somes eyes on a true masterpiece in the medium, A Nightmare Before Christmas (Burton wrote the story and produced Nightmare, but did not direct it), the filmmaker felt the need to be more hands-on for his next animated effort.Corpse Bride is not a multi-holiday triumph like Nightmare, but it is a pleasant enough oddity in its own right. The film follows a shy would-be groom (Johnny Depp) who inadvertently proposes marriage to a skeletal cadaver in the woods when he places a wedding ring on what he believes to be a branch during a private rehearsal. (Spoiler: Its the remains of a finger!)The spirit he awakens (Helena Bonham Carter) might also be more alive than the woman this groom is expected to marry. Its a family friendly Danse Macabre full of beautiful animation and tuneful Danny Elfman songs. To this day, it enjoys eternal life on cable television every October.12. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)If most of the 2010s marked a nadir in Burtons filmographyas gleaned by the previous films on this listlast years Beetlejuice BeetlejuiceBeetlejuice Beetlejuice nonetheless feels lively and quick-footed. Thats remarkable since it stars mostly dead people.Without an ounce of reverence or self-mythologizing what they did 36 years prior, Burton and stars Michael Keaton, Catherine OHara, and Winona Ryder have a ball getting gussied up and throwing down in this glorified $99 million Halloween party. Keaton hasnt missed a step in playing his scuzzy demon with the heart of Bugs Bunny, and Burton is most in his element when he is allowing the trickster to birth himself as a demonic Rosemarys Baby or going on an extended black-and-white detour/homage to the works of Mario Bava. Its gonzo nonsense that overcomes a plotless screenplay that might otherwise waste Ryder and newcomer Jenna Ortega. But no one can be fully wasted when theyre asked to lip-synch and dance to MacArthur Park.11. Mars Attacks! (1996)Full disclosure: I didnt care for Mars Attacks! when I saw it in theaters as a kid. Its cynicism about little green men from Mars obliterating every world leader and institution on Earthand the movie virtually thanking them for going to the troubledidnt sit right with a kid who loved Independence Day. However, Burtons slyer and more satirical take on an alien invasion throwback has aged a whole lot better, right down to the pleasure it takes in a blowhard deal-maker POTUS (a grinning Jack Nicholson) discovering he cant con his way out of becoming Martian fodder.The destruction of Nicholsons narcissistic world leader is just the tip of the iceberg though in a whos who all-star ensemble of popular 90s actors showing up just long enough to be abducted, experimented on, or otherwise disintegrated for the amusement of nihilists everywhere. Its definitely an acquired taste that in retrospect was always doomed at finding a four-quadrant audience, but its nostalgia for 1950s alien invasion movies paired with a desire to watch it all burn down makes for a distinct kind of madcap comedy worthy of the real Ed Wood.10. Frankenweenie (2012)This was a difficult one to place, because it is noticeably one of Burtons favorite stories. The 2012 animated movie is adapted from a story Burton wrote for a 1984 short film of the same name. That macabre and mischievous Frankenweenie was in live-action and a sly tribute to the Universal Monster movies that informed Burtons childhood while sitting in front of the TV as a disaffected youth. The stop-motion animated version is the same thing, if only more so.Once again we have a story about a boy quickening back to life via lightning bolts the dog he lost, but there are also winking homages for the parents (or grandparents) who remember Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), among others. This stop-motion feature film is also black-and-white and filled with genuine affection for film history and the pulpy roots of a boy and his dog undoing the tragedy of losing a pet. Still, we still kind of prefer the story in its original 29-minute form.9. Batman (1989)The movie that made Tim Burton a household name is one he seems to have a love-hate relationship with. Burton is obviously proud of helming a film that seeped into the culture and caught the imagination of millions-but the chintziness of that culture, from the media circus around the movie to the way producers Jon Peters and Peter Guber strong-armed him to include Prince songs, wound up becoming satirical fodder in the sequel.But even if Batman is compromised as a Burton movie, it is still a monumental piece of commercial moviemaking and pop culture history that continues to shape the industry today. Yet unlike so many modern superhero flicks, Batman retains a quirky and morbid personality befitting its director. From its intoxicating Gothic-meets-Art Deco set designs to its odd historical blending of the 1930s, 40s, and 80s into an aesthetic Neverland, the world of Batman is simultaneously bleak and grand; oppressive and inviting. Through it all, too, is a couple of performances better than critics of the 1980s would have you believe. Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson do great movie star work, holding together Burtons flights of fancy, and a threadbare screenplay, through sheer charisma and sharp character choices even if that character is just Nicholson going ham in the villains case. Also, that Danny Elfman score soars.8. Pee-wees Big Adventure (1985)Burtons first feature film is also one of his best. An inventive and daring expansion on the Pee-wees Playhouse television series of the 1980s, Big Adventure proved more imaginative and enchanting than likely anyone in the theater or at the studio anticipated. But Paul Reubens probably had a hunch. The Pee-wee actor was the one who hired Burton after watching the young former Disney animators short films Vincent and Frankenweenie, the latter of which got the wunderkind kicked off the Disney lot. Luckily, WB (with Reubens urging) took a chance on Burton, who turned a TV spinoff into a wacky riff on the Italian Neo-realist masterpiece, The Bicycle Thieves (1948).A love story about a strange guy (Reubens) and his best bike, Pee-wees first movie is a classic adventure tale wherein a bow-tied man-child must discover who took his beribboned bicycle and for what purpose. But its the details and world-building which Burton lovingly infused in the tale, beginning with those ribbons and extending to the way he visualized a cinematic Pee-wees morning breakfast, that has made this a cult classic.7. Batman Returns (1992)Its become a clich to note that Batman Returns is more a Tim Burton movie than a Batman one. But that is why it remains among the best superhero films ever made more than 30 years on. Whereas most films within this genre from the past few decades obsess over appeasing the Comic-Con crowd (and by proxy shareholders whose henchmen breathe down a filmmakers neck), Batman Returns is a bonafide auteur piece in Bat-drag; a big budget German Expressionist revival produced 70 years after Max Schreck played the original Nosferatu. That performance also informed a character in Burtons movie who is likewise named Max Schreck (Christopher Walken), and hes the scariest bloodsucker of all: a baby boomer capitalist.Yep, despite featuring a grotesque Penguin (Danny DeVito) and a heavily reimagined Catwoman (a phenomenal Michelle Pfeiffer), the real villain in Batman Returns is the industrialist who manipulates tortured souls and pitiful monsters like the Penguin into creating crass, merchandisable product. A metaphor for modern politics or Burtons own experience on the first Batman movie? Maybe both. The ultimate result is a richer, stranger movie in which all three villains represent different variations of the Batman persona (played here as a virtually silent wraith by Keaton). Their dualities are informed by their visual self-constructs, which inevitably fray and decay as the narrative culminates in full-fledged noir tragedy. Its operatic, perverse, kinky, and too downbeat for younger audiences. It got Burton fired, but not before he made the most subversive anti-Christmas movie of all.6. Sleepy Hollow (1999)In many ways the quintessential Tim Burton movie, everything that seems to entrance the filmmaker can be found in Sleepy Hollow: an ostensibly spooky story set literally around Halloween; pallid and disheveled characters traversing the cinematic influences of Burtons youth (in this case Hammer Horror movies); and a subtly wry, and often overlooked, sense of humor about all things obscene, which here amounts to veritable spit takes as innocent, men, women, and children lose their heads. Indeed, Sleepy Hollow is a stealth comedy about a foppish buffoon named Ichabod (Johnny Depp) prancing around Enlightenment era America and quaking at the sight of a mouse, even as he intends to face a Headless Horseman raised from Hell.Burton realizes it all with a conviction and gusto which has eluded many of his more recent attempts to channel childhood favorites into a storybook enchantment. In Sleepy Hollow, though, that spell is cast with dreamlike wonderment. The tenor of said wonder can vary depending on the sceneranging from palpable dread, as Depp and Christina Ricci approach a twisted tree that drips blood, or idyllic reverie as a boy remembers a mother before religion and his fathers false piety steals her awaybut its powerful magic all. The film also benefits from supporting work by Michael Gambon, Michael Gough, Ian McDiarmid, and Richard Griffiths as the (ahem) heads of their community. Add in a witchy Miranda Richardson and Christopher Walken as the Horseman, and thats a murderers row of talent.5. Big Fish (2003)One of the most impressive examples of Burton stretching his talents outside his comfort zone, Big Fish plays still in his wheelhouse of fairytale mythmaking, and impossible dream logic, but it does so with a milieu that ditches the Gothic for something more Southern and folksy. It also comes wrapped in a film determined to interrogate the need, and limitation, of interpreting the world with such artifice. Based on the genuinely Southern voice of Daniel Wallace, Big Fish presents a tall tale about a father and son. The elder seeks to reframe his life with the whimsical joy of Burtons most lighthearted flights of fancy, and the junior grew up to be a journalist who only knows skepticism toward such self-delusions (and perhaps deceptions).In his own way, Burton uses the film to dramatize why he prefers formalist fantasy over naturalism; he also comes the closest to addressing the recurrent motif in all his works about the chasm between fathers and sons. Often that is constructed by way of a cruel and overbearing father incapable of understanding their progeny, but by tackling a story where it is the son who cannot appreciate the life lived by his patriarch, Burton most clearly expresses the artistic need to embellish. And he does so in a story that is sunny, kind-hearted, and achingly sincere in its belief in the joy of community.4. Edward Scissorhands (1990)Burton first conceived of the Edward Scissorhands character when the future-filmmaker was still just a lonely teenager who couldnt relate to the suburban life around him in 1970s Burbank. In other words, the films hero is literally born from a sketch drawn by an isolated and despairing child. This speaks to why the eventual story Burton realized about this character, alongside screenwriter Caroline Thompson, would go on to strike a chord with generation after generation of sensitive, artistic, or otherwise Goth-leaning youths.Perhaps the cleanest and most structured of Burtons fairytale films, with a heaping helping of Universal Monsters sympathy for his creature (played here with silent cinema pathos by a young Johnny Depp), Edward Scissohrands is simple and direct in its metaphor and emotion. Edward, a child built in a lab by a kindly but mad scientist (Vincent Price), cannot connect or fit in with a suburbia so dreary that all the houses are painted in one of four sickly faded pastels (a brilliant idea by costume designer Bo Welch). Its always summer, always sunny, and Burton and Depps sullen avatar for adolescent ennui can only relate to his crush (Winona Ryder) when he admires her from afar or paints her out of ice. Yet it is their, and our, ability to appreciate that unrequited loneliness as something beautiful which gives the movie its yearning. Another exquisite Danny Elfman score also doesnt hurt.3. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)Burton first saw Harold Princes production of this Stephen Sondheim musical in the early 1980s when it was playing in London. At the time, Burton was a college student and aspiring animator, but even then he saw the inherently cinematic appeal in the lurid material about an aggrieved Victorian barber who lashes out at the world by murdering anyone who comes into his shop, and letting his unscrupulous landlady turn them into meat pies for an unsuspecting public.It should be say that on stage, the Sondheim musical is often performed as a dark comedy and satire about the exploitation of the working poor. Thats there too in Burtons movie, but he really extracts the classical Grand Guignol horror that is often underplayed in the theater. In the process, he made a film that wildly departs from the typical staging of what some consider the greatest Broadway musical ever written. It is sacrilege in the eyes of many theatergoers, and too tuneful with a wall-to-wall songbook for other horror fans. Yet Sondheim himself adored the picture, calling it the best adaptation of one of his musicals. Thats because Burton makes it pure cinematic tragedy and comes the closest he ever did at rekindling the menace of the Universal Monsters and Val Lewton chillers that long inspired him. This is a nearly black-and-white psychological drama until it oozes red. It remains the last time Burton conjured his early vitality and one of the best movie musicals of this decade.2. Beetlejuice (1988)At one point, a young Tim Burton wanted Sammy Davis Jr. to play the trickster demon Beetlejuice. He was thankfully steered away from that idea, but such an odd casting choice hints at the kooky and sublime madness being imbibed when this one-of-a-kind laugher got made. Produced from a Michael McDowell script that no one in town wanted to makeand which is a far sicker story than Burton ended up directingBeetlejuice is a distillation of quirky impulses and brazenly incongruous gags that should not meld together.Ostensibly the story of two squares (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis), who after a darkly funny accident discover the afterlife is a bureaucratic nightmare, Beetlejuice dances, shimmies, and does the literal calypso due to all the creative choices made by a young filmmaker determined to turn that premise into a 92-minute punchline. From the decision to use intentionally rudimentary and dated-looking stop-motion effects for the movies various creatures, to the baroque afterlife architecture taking on hard cartoonish angles and Halloween haunted house lighting, there is a kitschiness that is just bizarre enough to be mildly unsettling. Yet like Michael Keatons ingenious comedic creation as the eponymous bio-exorcist, the more menacing it seems, the funnier it plays.It is a movie that ends with teenage Winona Ryder becoming a star by lip-synching and dancing in the air to Harry Belafonte while joined by a chorus line of high school football player ghosts. None of it tracks, but all of it is strangely joyful. The movie represents Burtons preferred aesthetics and instincts at their absolute best.1. Ed Wood (1994)Tim Burtons made no secret about his affinity for the real Ed Wood Jr., a notorious 1950s genre hack whose movies were so incompetent he at one point was dubbed the worst director of all time. Yet as a filmmaker of similar interests, if not talent, Burton recognized in Wood the exuberance of an artist who just wanted to createwith no concern as to whether what he created was objectively good.Given the somewhat uneven trajectory of Burtons own career both before and after Ed Woodhe originally planned to be an animator at Disney, rememberthat kinship is easier to appreciate today. And there is sincere affection and even bliss in how Burton translates this to the screen. While screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszweski obviously have a penchant for romanticizing the schlock of yesteryear, Burton treats Ed Woods Hollywood story as a great American life and in the process creates one of the great American films. Filmed in lush black-and-white and with lighting that alternates between the naturalism of a 1950s message picture and pure Universal Pictures camp, Burton marries all sides of Golden Age Hollywood, be it high culture (arguably represented by Martin Landaus still-refined if soiled Bela Lugosi) or low which is pretty much every other character in the movie.Burtons Ed Wood is a valentine to the fun and excitement of finding your tribe on a film set, even if this telling of that relief must sandblast the hard edges off the real Woods life. (In Burtons film, Johnny Depp plays the director with that impossible Mid-Atlantic accent and the optimism of 1930s Capra.) Its a beautiful piece of cinema and one of the best films ever made about making movies.