The wonderful paradox of Tim Burton is that his films are so uniformly distinctive. Grandly Gothic and quietly surreal, equal parts funny and scary, they are haunted by myriad influences but remain uniquely his creations. No one else could have made them. So how do you select eight films from an idiosyncratic canon? How do you sculpt a topiary of the director from such a rich, dark garden?

Big eyes are required. Look closer and patterns emerge, a range of approaches, scales, themes, budgets, and genres (from musicals to Martians). They are all autobiographical studies, but to different degrees. I went in search of the styles within the style, the different guises of Burtonesque: animation (Frankenweenie), black comedy (Beetlejuice), fairy tale (Edward Scissorhands), blockbuster (Batman Returns), passion project (Ed Wood), horror (Sleepy Hollow), grandiose (Sweeney Todd), and character study (Big Eyes). Nevertheless, such labels are interchangeable.