It’s not hard to find great Johnny Depp movies, because this versatile actor does an excellent job choosing which movies he wants to be a part of. But when it comes to movies with Johnny Depp, I tend to like his most unique and quirky roles. This is a list of five of the best movies starring Johnny Depp, including a dark fairytale, a realistic western, a family-friendly favorite, and a film about a dysfunctional family. If you watch all of these Johnny Depp movies, you’ll be sure to appreciate the great range this actor has:
‘Edward Scissorhands’ – Tim Burton has collaborated with Johnny Depp on many different movies, but this dark and twisted fairytale is one of my favorite movies starring Johnny Depp as well as one of Tim Burton’s best. The movie focuses on Edward, a humanoid creation of an inventor that bestowed him with many different-sized blades instead of hands. When he is discovered alone in the gigantic gothic house that his inventor lived and died in by an Avon saleswoman, he is taken in under her wing and introduced to suburban life. He becomes a bit of a sideshow to the townspeople through his amazing abilities to cut hedges and hair, but it becomes clear that he is more man than machine when he falls in love with the daughter of the woman that took him in. Johnny Depp’s characterization of Edward has him starting out as a bit of a blank slate at first, but his character begins to blossom, expressing a great range of emotion with very little dialogue. When I first saw the movie as a child, I was very frightened by Edward’s appearance, but soon realized that he was a harmless and loving creature that was more human than those in the movie that eventually began to fear and hate him. Johnny Depp does an amazing job at capturing Edward’s gentle awkwardness, and fans probably began to look forward to other movies starring Johnny Depp after seeing his master artistry here.
‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape’ – I’ve noticed that in many of the Johnny Depp movies I’ve seen, he takes on very challenging roles, and this is one of his toughest. Here he plays Gilbert, the most normal member of a dysfunctional family composed in part by an extremely obese mother and a mentally handicapped brother. With his mother bedridden, his father dead after committing suicide, and his brother being more than a handful (he has a strong urge to climb the town’s water tower and will attempt to do so when given the chance), young Gilbert ends up being the man-of-the-house. To top it all off, he’s having an affair with a needy married woman and he might lose his job at the small-town grocery store where he works as it loses business to a big chain store. This is by far one of the most powerful movies with Johnny Depp I’ve ever seen; just like his character, he has to take on a lot of responsibility in this role, balancing out showing love and compassion for his character’s family while expressing frustration at being in such a difficult situation and longing to have a life of his own. When a new girl comes to town, Johnny Depp does an amazing job of opening Gilbert up and showing that he has many desires and dreams of his own, but he also manages to capture the weariness of a life spent taking care of others and extreme inner conflict at being faced with choosing to continue to care for his family or looking for his own piece of the pie. It’s one of the best movies starring Johnny Depp acting-wise, but it’s also simply a good movie, period.
‘Dead Man’ – This is one of the few westerns I’ve seen in my life that I actually looked at and thought, “This really could have happened in the old west.” Of all the Johnny Depp movies I’ve seen, this has to be the best one he’s ever been in. In the movie we don’t get to see the west through the eyes of a tough cowboy, but rather through the spectacles of a civilized clerk on his way to take up a job in a frontier town. When he finally arrives after a very long journey, he learns that the job has been taken. Through a mishap involving a prostitute and her fiancé, he ends up wounded and wandering about in the woods with a mysterious Native American guide named Nobody. This is one of the most unique movies with Johnny Depp starring that I’ve ever seen, and a refreshing look at the old west. His character is very out-of-place in his wild surroundings, but despite his staid, civilized manner, he has a poetic side to him that sympathizes with other weak living things trying to eke out an existence in the cruel world he finds himself in, as is evidenced in the scene where he embraces a dead fawn. The fate of Johnny Depp’s character is certain from the time he treads into the wilderness, and the rest of the movie simply focuses on his journey to the inevitable end. There are many movies with Johnny Depp that film fanatics love, but this dark and poetic masterpiece often gets overlooked. So if you want to see one of the best movies starring Johnny Depp, you must give this diamond in the rough a chance.
‘Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl’ – In this film, a young blacksmith teams up with a savvy swashbuckling pirate in order to save his sweetheart from a group of sinister, undead corsairs. It’s hard to believe that, of all of the amazing movies starring Johnny Depp, this is the first one he got nominated for an Oscar for. And it was for a family-friendly movie based on a Disney World ride, no less; a nomination for something like this is almost impossible to pull off. However, Johnny Depp’s portrayal of Jack Sparrow helped make the half-crazed pirate one of the most beloved characters of modern times. The quirky pirate was the best part of the movie, with Johnny Depp giving Captain Jack rock-star like airs (he was supposedly based in part on Rolling Stones member Keith Richards). Somehow Johnny Depp manages to make Captain Jack funny, charming, and frightening all at the same time. When it comes to family-friendly movies with Johnny Depp, this is your best bet, although the undead pirates are a little creepy.
‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ – When I first saw this movie, I didn’t even know Johnny Depp was in it; that’s how much of a transformation he undergoes. It’s definitely one of the funniest movies starring Johnny Depp, as he portrays one of beloved author Hunter S. Thompson’s characters (really a caricature of Thompson himself), a writer on a road trip to Las Vegas to cover a sporting event with his gonzo attorney in tow. If you’ve ever seen footage of Hunter S. Thompson, then you’ll really respect just how great of a job Johnny Depp does of capturing his drug-abusing essence. The movie itself is hilarious, and it’s one of my favorite Johnny Depp movies because, despite the fact that I have no idea what it’s like to be on hardcore drugs, this movie makes me feel like I’m along for the twisted trip. From sitting amongst a convention of cops learning how to spot a drug abuser while exhibiting many of the signs himself to flooding his hotel room and attempting to buy a chimpanzee, there are no shortage of laugh-out-loud moments in this wild film, one that it looks like ‘The Hangover’ might have taken a page from. I still contend that it’s the best film about Las Vegas, as well as being one of the best movies with Johnny Depp and his partner in crime, Benicio Del Toro.
If you watch each one of these amazing movies starring Johnny Depp, you’ll truly appreciate what a versatile actor he is. Just watch any of the many movies with Johnny Depp if you want to see something unique, refreshing, and entertaining. There aren’t many actors that I can say that their whole body of work is worth watching, but when it comes to Johnny Depp movies, most of his I’d consider must-sees.
SOURCES: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000136/
