Director: Tim Burton

Tim Burton and Johnny Depp collaborate once again to bring to screen this hit Broadway musical, considered one of the bloodiest ever. And from the looks of the film and Depp, they pick up right from where they left off in Sleepy Hollow and back, back in Edward Scissorhands.

Nominated for an Oscar for best actor for his portrayal of Sweeney Todd, Depp is again excellent. As a man driven to mindless killings by his desire for revenge, he exudes grief for a lost family even as he slashes throats. Todd thinks of nothing else throughout the film, and neither does Depp. The almost desperate mania that drives Todd is effectively conveyed by the versatile actor.

The story is of a barber, Benjamin Barker, who has returned to England after 15 years of being incarcerated on false charges. Judge Turpin (Rickman) cooked up those charges as he desired Barker’s wife. After returning, Barker who now calls himself Sweeney Todd goes back to his old shop over Mrs Lovett’s pie shop. Mrs Lovett (Bonham Carter) tells him that after he was sent away, Turpin raped his wife Lucy, who later poisoned herself, and took in his daughter as his ward.

Todd quickly establishes himself in the barber business and waits for Turpin and his slimy aide to come to his shop. By then, a young sailor he befriended on the trip back to England has fallen in love with his daughter Joanna. However, the judge would have none of it and he not only has the sailor beaten up but also declares that he will marry Joanna to “protect” her.

One day the judge does come to Todd’s shop but is saved just before the barber can kill him. An angry Todd now starts killing every customer he gets. Driven by her love for him, Mrs Lovett agrees to be a party to this. The meat from the dead bodies goes into her pies, which are soon doing roaring business.

Todd’s sparse life is paralleled by the film’s own spare look. It’s a dark, Charles Dickensian world with grimy streets and generally morose people, and the barber and its companion meat pie shop have few embellishments apart from photos of Todd’s previous life. As Todd and Mrs Lovett look out in one scene from their building, they seem to be glancing at a world quite different from their own, but equally grim. The art direction, in fact, won Sweeney Todd an Oscar at the recent Academy Awards.

Sacha Baron Cohen of Borat fame provides the only colour in the film shot almost entirely in black and white.

Though she didn’t get any nominations, Bonham Carter has the difficult part of a woman who sees the madness of Todd but chooses to look past it because she loves him and fantasises that one day he may love her back. When a small boy she has imagined as part of this fantasy family with Todd is threatened by his all-consummating revenge, Mrs Lovett’s devastation that her dream doesn’t stand a chance against Todd’s past is evident.

Vantage Point

Cast: Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox, Forest Whitaker, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver

Director: Pete Travis

So MANY films have been made now on the assassination or probable assassination of the American President that the makers of this film realised they had to do “something different”. So, the tagline: 8 strangers, 8 points of view, 1 truth.

So, the concept: the American President is attacked at a historic summit against terror in Spain, and the film goes on to examine the event from the eyes of eight people witness to it.

So far, so good. However, the problem is that told six times over, the attempted assassination in the end portrays only one point of view: that bad people want to kill the US President (Hurt), who is a brave sort of fellow, and that a lone Secret Agent (Quaid) after a painfully wrong car chase catches them. What about the seven other points of view?

Vantage Point does have eight vantage points — and stations some interesting actors from Weaver to Whitaker there—¿ but from all, the view is the same.