Just saw Sleepy Hollow (1999).
This was my first exposure to the story of Sleepy Hollow and man, I am happy to have seen this.
Something I really love about Tim Burton (this being my 5th Tim Burton directed film I've seen) is his aesthetic and the way he views the world. It's a kind of gothic reality that's fantastical in all of the right ways. Makes me want the real reality to be the same one that Tim Burton sees it. The film has a surreal spookiness to the setting which is swimming with wonderful fog, fun scarecrows, lonely architecture, people who look half dead, etc brings an awesome vision. Which is exactly the way I try to style my life like!
The cinematography was completely on point, too. Really helped me get lost in the world. How gorgeous the film can be at times really emphasizes the parts of the film that don't look as awesome. The movie really nailed the fantasy bits, like The Tree of the Dead, the Headless Horseman, the witch, etc, but the film struggled to make human interactions visually interesting. My eyes glazed over when a room full of people got together to talk in static scenes and at times I got bored enough to play Super Mario 3D Land (which says a lot considering how much I do not like 3D Land). Not to mention that the visual effects are super dated and just plain awful. Besides about half of the CGI for the final transformation, I thought almost all of it was hideous. I should have expected it from a film from 1999, but it stood out to me when the film clearly showed how pretty it can be.
That being said, almost everything I said was about the visuals of the film when there's a perfectly cool story here to talk about. To be fair, seeing my aesthetic on screen is a visual treat for me. Anyway, I thought the story was inconsistently paced but intriguing enough throughout for me to not completely lose interest! I really didn't care about Ichanod's backstory and the conspiracy plot, while engaging, had a lot lost due to the inability for the cinematography to make it visually interesting. I felt as if long stretches of the movie were stagnant and I was impatient and wanted to see it accelerate, or at least improve on its weaker elements. That being said, the church scene and the final act were absolutely incredible and I loved every beat of it. The film's payoff was incredible and while I didn't think the movie needed a huge action setpiece send off, it was handled with a lot of energy that had me hooked.
So overall I really liked the movie. Wish the boring stretches were replaced with more atmosphere and world building, but I'm happy with the end result. Good movie!
7/10
Ranking of Tim Burton movies I've seen:
Batman Returns
The Corpse Bride
Batman
Sleepy Hollow (1999)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory