Grade: B+

Two decades is a long time between movies that show a director at his best, and fans of Tim Burton have wondered since 1994—when his one undisputed masterpiece “Ed Wood” was released—whether he’d pretty much lost his touch. Yes, he’d been the force behind some wickedly amusing animated films—“The Corpse Bride” and “Frankenweenie”—but his live-action pictures (with the exception of “Sweeney Todd”) have been a very mixed bag, more interesting for their visuals than for their overall quality. The streak is finally broken with “Big Eyes,” which in many respects returns to the “Ed Wood” template as a quirky biographically-based tale told with genuine affection as well as Burton’s lavish style (something that may derive not only from Burton’s preferences but by the renewed collaboration with Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who also penned “Wood”).

The subject this time around is another artist—Wood certainly thought of himself as such, however delusional he might have been: painter Margaret Keane, played by Amy Adams. Her pictures of sad, soulful urchins with huge, beseeching eyes became a pop phenomenon in the early sixties. But they brought her no recognition, because they weren’t marketed as her work. Her second husband Walter (Christoph Waltz), a real-estate man and wannabe artist who’d befriended her when she fled with her daughter to San Francisco to escape an unhappy marriage, took credit for the pieces and proved a genius at promoting them—and himself.

The movie is, of course, designed as a proto-feminist fable—Walter argued that the paintings would never be taken seriously if it was revealed they were the work of a woman, and eventually Margaret fled to Hawaii, divorced Keane, sued him for slander when he continued to claim the work as his own, and was awarded damages in a courtroom showdown in which the judge ordered the litigants to produce paintings in the Keane style and only Margaret could do so. And Adams is very good at projecting Margaret’s combination of determination and submissiveness, fragility and backbone. She also looks wonderful in the fashions of the sixties, sporting a hairdo from the period that seems almost sculpted in its Grace Kelly perfection.

But as good as Adams is, it’s really Waltz who carries the picture. He’ll probably be pilloried by some for a performance that’s defiantly over-the-top from the get-go and only ratchets up as the film proceeds, ending in a wonderfully farcical exhibition in court, where he eagerly embraces the opportunity to serve as his own lawyer. Elsewhere, however, he positively seethes with indignation when “his” work is lambasted as kitsch by the New York Times’ effete critic (deliciously pompous Terence Stamp) and smiles triumphantly at the neighborhood gallery owner (suitably smarmy Jason Schwartzman) who’s previously dismissed it; and his domestic tirades against Margaret and her perceptive daughter Jane (played at first by Delaney Raye and then by Madeleine Arthur) are positively frightening.

Many viewers complained about Johnny Depp’s flamboyance in “Ed Wood,” too, but it embodied a degree of obsession, crossed with sheer showmanship, whose maniacal intensity was essential to making the narrative work. Waltz accomplishes a similar feat here. He gives Walter the bravado the character needs—and more—but also captures the burning lust for talent he doesn’t possess that explains his need to claim his wife’s work for himself, even to the extent of self-deception. It takes courage to throw caution to the wind as Waltz does here, and it pays off for him and Burton.

“Big Eyes” has another strong point in its physical production, which indulges Burton’s taste for candy-colored visuals by taking a Ross Hunter sixties style up a notch. Rick Heinrichs’ production design, the art direction supervised by Chris August, Shane Vieau’s set decoration and Colleen Atwood’s costumes, all set off by Bruno Delbonnel’s gleaming cinematography, together give the story a fairytale feel that’s further accentuated by regular collaborator Danny Elfman’s spry score.

There is one significant flaw in the picture, though, and that’s the framing device that tells the story via narration by Dick Nolan (Danny Huston), a San Francisco gossip columnist who was instrumental in pushing the Keane juggernaut after Walter had managed to persuade Enrico Banducci (Jon Polito), owner of the hungry I, to exhibit “his” paintings in a hallway of the night spot. Perhaps it was thought impossible to fit all the necessary exposition into the script without it, but even so much of Huston’s recitation consists of banal, obvious observations.

That’s not enough to sink a movie that represents a solid return to form for Burton, even if it never attains the dizzying heights of “Ed Wood.”

Grade: B+

A modern passion play set on the rocky northwest coast of Ireland, “Calvary” is the sophomore feature by writer-director John Michael McDonagh, and quite different from his debut, the comedic action film “The Guard.” It does, however, share with that film its star Brendan Gleeson, who’s as craggy as the locale, and it offers an intriguing blend of high drama and dark humor.

Gleeson plays Father James, a priest serving a small parish in County Sligo. A big, hulking, bearded figure in his cassock, he’s a genuinely caring, spiritually driven individual who joined the priesthood only after the death of his wife. As the film opens, he’s visited in the old-style confessional box by an unidentified man who says that as a child he was molested by a priest and intends to punish the clerical establishment by killing Father James a week later on the beach. He knows the priest to be a good man, which, he argues, will be exactly the point. In other words, Father James will be dying for the crimes of others—as, in Catholic theology, Christ did.

The remainder of “Calvary” records the priest’s process to a potentially fatal encounter with the unknown parishioner as, in a sort of dark parody of the stations of the cross, he confronts possible suspects and others in the village. One is town butcher Jack (Chris O’Dowd), whose wife Veronica (Orla O’Rourke) is having a blatant affair with car repairman Simon Asamoah (Isaach De Bankole). Another is wealthy local lord Michael Fitzgerald (Dylan Moran), a lonely, drunken profligate looking for some sort of personal redemption. Then there’s Dr. Frank Harte (Aidan Gillen), a cynical atheist who ridicules the very notion of faith; Brendan (Pat Shortt), the short-tempered barman at the village pub; and Milo (Killian Scott), a socially awkward young man so desperate for sex that he’s considering joining the army as an outlet for his passion. One person who can certainly be ruled out, by reason of age, is Father James’ altar boy (Micheal Og Lane), and another is Freddie Joyce (Domhnall Gleeson), the imprisoned serial killer who asks the priest to visit him in his darkest week.

Father James receives little in the way of consolation or good advice from his clerical associate Father Timothy (David Wilmot), an obtuse stickler for rules wholly out of his element in Sligo, or his superior Bishop Montgomery (David McSavage), who offers nothing but bland platitudes. More generous in spirit but no more helpful are Gerard Ryan (M. Emmet Walsh), a crusty American novelist living out his last days in relative seclusion on an island off the coast, and Teresa (Marie-Josee Croze), a French tourist whom the priest comforts after giving the last rites to her husband, the victim of a car crash. Somewhat more practical is Gerry Stanton (Gary Lydon), a cop who loans Father James a gun even as his lover Leo (Owen Sharpe) makes a flamboyant departure from the cop’s house.

The specter of death hangs over everything in “Calvary”—not just in terms of the demise of Teresa’s husband, the illness of Ryan (who asks Father James to procure the gun for him) and Joyce’s recollections of his crimes, but by reason of the fact that the week also sees a visit by the priest’s daughter Fiona (Kelly Reilly), who arrives with her wrists still exhibiting the scars from a recent suicide attempt. And yet the film balances the quite heavy drama with shafts of humor—humor of a dark, biting sort, to be sure, but though the laughter might catch in your throat at times, the film does elicit it.

It must be admitted that many of the secondary performances in the film are theatrical turns of a very flamboyant sort—that’s certainly true of Gillan and Moran, but also of O’Dowd. The richness of McDonagh’s dialogue, as well as his directing style, encourages an oversized approach. But despite his size there’s not a hint of showiness or brassiness to Gleeson’s performance. He does get a sequence to express the priest’s anger at a situation that threatens the very foundations of his faith and vocation when he retreats to the bottle after many years’ abstinence and tries to exorcise his demons through violence. But for the most part Gleeson conveys, with remarkable control and reticence, a genuinely spiritual-minded man struggling to find a way to avoid a confrontation that might mean his death while at the same time overcoming fear and despair to accept what is going to happen without complaint. “Calvary” is a mystery in both senses of the term: it’s set up to push the viewer to try to figure out whom the voice in the first scene belongs to. But it also touches on what’s more broadly called the mystery of faith, through which a person like Father James willingly places his fate, as he would see it, in God’s hands.

The film is beautifully shot by Larry Smith, who uses the locations expertly and stages sequences like a church fire with both economy and precision, qualities also to be found in Chris Gill’s editing. Production credits are first-rate throughout—from Mark Gallagher’s overall design to Fiona Daly’s art direction, Eimer Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh’s costumes and Patrick Cassidy’s score.

The large issue that “Calvary” raises—of clerical abuse of children and its emotional toll—is one that’s been treated by other films in recent years, and one that’s become especially wrenching in Ireland of late. McDonagh has found a way to deal with it in a fashion that’s trenchant, absorbing, and quite distinctive in approach.