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The films of Johnny Depp, rated from 'good' to 'WTF is this total shit?'

JOHNNY Depp is a versatile, talented actor, which makes his film choices and frequent crap performances all the more baffling. Here’s what to add to your watchlist and what to avoid:

Edward Scissorhands (1990)

Johnny’s best film, a funny, exciting, moving bit of gothic retro. Gone are the days of having his scenes all cut from Platoon or being teenage Freddy Krueger fodder in Nightmare on Elm Street. Yes, Johnny can’t go wrong now.

Ed Wood (1994)

Depp takes a chance on this quirky tale of the strange director of Plan 9 from Outer Space. The critical acclaim pours in. He really does have a knack for picking good projects, huh?

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)

Exhausting remake of the 1971 film which is only marginally less traumatising for a child to watch than Come and See. Tim Burton ODs on the CGI as usual, and Johnny is tiresomely wacky, as if you hadn’t had quite enough of that sort of thing from Gene Wilder.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

Fun blockbuster, and only film bores who hate everything except Chinatown and Tarkovsky’s Stalker can’t enjoy it for what it is. However that Keith Richards impression starts to get on your tits after a while. Hopefully Johnny won’t do that sort of thing again.

From Hell (2001)

What the f**k is that accent? Even if you can ignore Depp’s strangulated cockney wittering, the film doesn’t get better. Alan Moore’s ideas about conspiracies and freemasonry don’t really feature and it’s more bog standard Ripper fare. You may as well just watch one of those bollocks History Channel shows with a title like Was Queen Victoria the Real Jack the Ripper?

Sherlock Gnomes (2018)

Not very good, and raises the question, why is Johnny Depp in this? Normally it’s left to James Corden to do the voices for crap animated films. However it was probably an easy pay cheque, so maybe a good decision on the off-chance he ended up in a terrifyingly expensive libel case.

Alice Through The Looking Glass (2016)

Please, no more Depp-Burton CGI whimsy. Less of a fresh take on a children’s classic and more of a brutal assault on your eyeballs. Full of nonsense and you wish Johnny would do something fun again, like Pirates of the Caribbean.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017)

Or Pirates of the Caribbean: Where Things Have Really Gone Tits Up. At some point the storylines got so pointlessly complicated you needed to take a notepad to the cinema. By now you’re so sick of loveable Captain Jack Sparrow you want to kill him, and Keith Richards just for good measure.

Rampant inflation and other things that should stay in the Nineties

THE price of everything is going up at levels not seen for three decades. If only rampant inflation and these other things could have stayed in the Nineties:

Rampant inflation

The Nineties revival has finally got round to the nation’s wallets as inflation hits highs not seen since for 30 years. Weirdly it’s details like this which nostalgic Gen Xers seem to overlook when they pine for the days of grunge and good episodes of The Simpsons. There wasn’t even any wi-fi back then either. It was practically mediaeval.

Misguided British pride

For some people the 2020s is all about doubling down on the idea of Global Britain, whereas the Nineties was madly in love with Britpop. Both involve an obscene amount of flag waving, but at least die hard Brexiteers didn’t coin the phrase ‘Cool Britannia’. In retrospect it’s hard to tell if catchy indie pop was worse than leaving the EU.

Politicians committing crimes

Yes, Boris Johnson is the first sitting prime minister found to have broken the law. However the politicians of the Nineties weren’t exactly immaculate saints in comparison. At time of writing Johnson hasn’t followed an American president into war on the grounds of false intelligence, although give it 24 hours because that would be a convenient distraction.

Russian invasions

Russia spent a fair amount of the Nineties rolling tanks into whichever neighbouring state had annoyed it that day. It was as if they were trying to re-establish some sort of union of Soviet countries, and Russia still clings on to its idealised past like a 50 year-old raver who misses acid house. It was never as good as you remember.

Flared jeans

Truly the most unforgivable sin of the Nineties. Wearing flared jeans was like walking around with two pairs of perpetually damp denim sails billowing around your ankles. In this age of austerity that excess fabric could be used to clothe a family of four with enough material spare to whip up a few hammocks. Worst of all they looked f**king awful.

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