9) Alice in Wonderland
The entire 2010 version of Alice in Wonderland may not have worked for me, but the performances in it were spectacular, from Helena Bonham Carter to Mia Wasikowska to Anne Hathaway to the Mad Hatter himself, Johnny Depp. Because of the string of odd characters Depp had portrayed prior to Alice, many of which being collaborations with Tim Burton, it was understandable for people to see Depp as Hatter and dismiss it as just another one of those crazy Johnny Depp performances, crazy for crazy’s sake, old crazy Johnny at it again, that crazy guy. But of course that only adds to the contextual madness of the Hatter character.
Really, for me, the character was as solid as any of Depp’s other crazy characters, but I admit that it’s easy, when you watch them all in a row, to get them mixed in your head. It’s like hearing an album of a band you really like and thinking, well, at first these songs all sort of sound alike. Only to later on pick up on the differences when you listen again and again. I suspect the Mad Hatter is like this. What gives me faith is that insane dance he does at the end. They built up that dance and built it up and built it up, and when it arrives—well I’ll be damned if it didn’t just make the entire movie and accompanying Depp performance work for me.
