Hold on, was all that stuff TRUE? I need to find some of his movies, asap
Pretty good movie. The beginning was extremely dumb, and Depp's acting was suspect, but the film got substantially better. The most interesting thing for me was the complex relationship between Wood and Lugosi. Was it a friendship, or was Wood simply exploiting a sick old man in the hopes of garnering more interest in his films? And speaking of Legosi, Martin Landau's performance was amazing; the quality of the film improved once he showed up on the screen.
As I said earlier, the beginning of the film was quite underwhelming. The editing was a bit confusing as shots seemed to jump back and forth with little reason. Many characters seemed to come and go for long periods of time. Also, as a fan of cheeseburgers I couldn't help but think the whole transvestite thing was just tacked on to be factually accurate; I didn't pick up much substance or relevance in it, and it seemed to just pop up randomly through the movie.
After the Glen or Glenda stuff the film really got going for me. While Wood definitely seems like a horrible director, I found it interesting that he was quite passionate about his work. Perhaps he saw filmmaking as a more acceptable escape than his cross dressing. His main motivation wasn't to make tons of money and get success, but to simply be able to finance his cinema passion and gain some critical acclaim.
If I had to rate the film I'd say....8/10
