he made “halloween“ so he sorta owns the holiday. like duh the dude is the best - it’s not common to have directors that also score their films and that’s part of why he’s so epic. controlling both sound & vision and really sucking you into these weird movies - his genre is so complex too, not straight horror, not quite comedy
i love all his films for different reasons but these are maybe my top 3:
in the mouth of madness
they live
the fog
I’m in the middle of a Burton watch through and forgot how important his movies were to me as a kid. His early run (plus the visual language of Nightmare Before Christmas) taught me auteur theory. Ed Wood is a masterpiece. Big Fish was one of the first grown up movies I saw in a theatre (a packed theatre, opening weekend). Edward Scissorhands was a manual to teenage romance. I love it all so much.
This man does not miss. His movies are reliably and consistently high-quality stuff. His range is impressive - from sci-fi, horror, romance, period drama…he kills it all the time. Brilliant, brilliant.
promotes positivity
pro tip, dreams don’t always make sense - so when weird/bad stuff happens, you can shrug it off and be like wow what a weird dream bro 🤷