Darkman (1990) ***1/2
I miss this era of filmmaking. Over the top, theatrical, gothic, slightly campy superhero/comic book movies like Tim Burton 's Batman (1989) ( review ), Warren Beatty 's Dick Tracy (1990), and Sam Raimi 's Darkman (1990) are my jam. Coincidentally, Danny Elfman scored all three—the composer was in his prime, on a truly impressive run from 1988–1990, scoring a whopping 10 films! The last time I watched Darkman was almost 10 years ago to the day and it was even better than I remembered. Taking inspiration from Universal Monsters (in particular 1933's The Invisible Man ( review ), with its gleefully vindictive “hero”), Raimi—with all his weirdness, particular humor ("take the fucking elephant!"), cartoonish violence, dutch angles, frenetic camerawork, and visual inventiveness—created a truly bizarre but very entertaining picture. Some of the optical effects haven’t held up well (charmingly so), but the goopy, gory makeup effects are fantastic.