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Only Stephen Sondheim would craft a musical about a serial killer, the infamous Sweeney Todd, Demon Barber of Fleet Street. And only Tim Burton would be capable of turning it into a fantastic movie. It has been the fodder for other movie producers and directors, but now Tim Burton has set the gold standard. You will have to forgive me for using the one of the most intricate reviews written on this movie. Sans politics, Sweeney Todd should take away Best Director, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress hands down. However, we all know how crooked the Oscar committee can be. According to Michael Scragow of the Baltimore Sun: “The eyes have it in Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and they belong to Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. Burton’s ineluctably involving version of the Stephen Sondheim musical about the homicidal hair-trimmer of the title (Depp) – and the meat-pie-maker Mrs. Lovett (Carter) who comes up with the idea of using corpses as ingredients – plays each crucial action off the otherworldly orbs of his stars. The impact is hypnotic. The director and his screenwriter, John Logan, lop off the celebrated prologue and start right with Todd and the male ingenue Anthony Hope (Jamie Campbell Bower), sailing into a visually and morally murky 19th-century London that Hope finds an Olympus and Todd a cesspit where his life went awry. Anyone except conventional thrill-seekers – and Sondheim purists – should be hooked by the way Burton irradiates his performers’ expressions while bathing them in a Hadean light. Without digital animation, they do what Beowulf couldn’t: They bring superhuman intensity to the fallible creatures in a gory fable. They act the songs rather than belt them out. It’s both unsettling and ticklish, as if they’re whispering foul versions of sweet nothings in your ear. Todd sings of his former life as barber Benjamin Barker, sent to prison on trumped-up charges by a crooked judge (Alan Rickman) who wants to corrupt Barker’s beautiful, virtuous wife. But the gaudy flashback episodes of Barker’s fall register as less real than the shadow-of-the-gallows present. Burton, cinematographer Dariusz Wolski and production designer Dante Ferretti sustain a gray-brown and off-white color scheme. Until Burton unstops the story’s gushers of blood, the fracturing and fuzzing of scenes as seen in warped windows and cracked mirrors provide all the visual zing this movie needs. Depp brings Todd a spectral intensity from the outset. And when he clicks with Bonham Carter’s Mrs. Lovett as a potential mate (if not, from his point of view, a lovemate), an aberrant electricity leaps out between them. I saw the original production with Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury; though Lansbury gave a mythic black-comic performance, I never bought their quasi-marital partnership as the story’s life-blood and cement. Casting the vital, brooding Depp, and the voluptuously funny Bonham Carter brings the film an emotional texture akin to bristling fur. Bonham Carter delivers the key performance in the movie: She plays Mrs. Lovett not merely as a comic grotesque, but as a romantic grotesque, too, and that makes all the difference. Lovett’s competition with the memory of Todd’s wife is stronger here than in any other production that I’ve seen. And her dream of living “By the Sea” has an off-kilter poignancy, partly because Burton and Wolski shoot this fantasy as if through Lovett’s antique tinted glasses. The amorous aura that Bonham Carter generates for the both of them makes the irony of the central horror all the more lethal. Depp’s eyes overflow with romantic agony while he dispatches one unlucky customer after another, waiting for the judge to take his seat; Burton spells out the gap between Todd’s self-justification and his atrocities in spattered blood that rivals the climactic gore-fest in Kurosawa’s classic samurai film Sanjuro. The cannibalistic black comedy of Mrs. Lovett’s surging meat-pie business keeps the comedy percolating, too. So does Sacha Baron Cohen’s preening peacock of a barber, Pirelli. And when it comes to heartache, we get Edward Sanders as Tobias, singing “Not While I’m Around” with a full heart and innate decorum that bring tears to our eyes as well as Mrs. Lovett’s. Of course, she’s crying partly because she reckons she has to murder him. Burton, Depp and Bonham Carter turn Sweeney Todd into the damndest thing: a warped dream of domestic bliss that leaves you horrified and inconsolable. It’s the opposite number to Burton’s near-great family drama Big Fish. The big fish here are puffed-up public figures or insane romantics, and they end up sliced and diced.” The only caveat I can add to this is “it ain’t no Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.” If you are unfamiliar with Sondheim, then you will immediately be offended by music that seems dissonant. His musical scores are intricate and finely tuned, but not for the timid ear. You have to listen carefully to the lyrics as they are often full of content. Look for lingering themes to reoccur with different words. I find his music grating to the ear and can tell you that must master the performance of his music must have a very good ear and perfect pitch. You will not be able to take away any real “hummable” tunes and in fact most will not be memorable. Probably the most lyrical piece in the whole compendium is “Joanna,” which does recur a couple of times. This movie also shows quite explicitly the overlooked versatility of Johnny Depp. I guess he just doesn’t click with the Hollywood set because he is not associated with scandalous behavior like most of the other bohemians. Personally, I would have preferred a bit less darkness, a little less CGI scenery and might have kept Depp away from the Edward Scissorhands hairdo. Carter could have used a little less makeup under the eyes. But all in all, it has Tim Burton’s paw prints all over it and this truly was his finest 117 minutes. A must see, but not for the timid when the blood starts spurting. I am sure that parodies will soon appear on YouTube that rival “Cats in the Kettle” …. “Judge in the Pie” comes to mind. This movie could turn you into a vegetarian.

“For die-hard fans of the Fab Four — and anyone who was touched by the magic of the ’60s — the film is a strange, nostalgic, suitably outrageous ode to a very real revolution in consciousness.” – William Arnold, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

This is a very interesting and entertaining movie that is worth the experience just for the musical arrangements of 33 Beatles’ songs. As one who was coming of age in that era – with the draft, Viet Nam, and student rebellion and protest – this is a nostalgic journey back through time. In fact that essentially sums up the basic story line. A 20 something blue collar Brit comes to America to locate his Father who had had an affair with his Mother leaving her with a child in the oven. Unfortunately Pop is a Janitor at Princeton. While there he runs into a “Richie Rich” type and they establish a friendship that results in our Brit attending the typical dysfunctional upper class Thanksgiving dinner where he meets the sister. Of course our college boy has no ambition and as a result goes on an extended road trip to the Village in NYC taking along his new found friend. The sister soon follows, a love relationship ensues, she becomes politically active, brother gets drafted, and our illegal alien Brit is an artistic pacifist.

It’s a loosely bound plot. More a menagerie of music videos than story lines. Very well done and the arrangements are by far more superior than the originals – from a musical standpoint. This ain’t rock and roll, it is a compendium of functional lyrics set to real music – probably more suited now to those who grew up in that era and are becoming more placid and traditional.

Although this is a 2 hour and 11 minute movie, it actually goes too fast. It is definitely worth the price of admission just to hear the arrangement of “Let it Be” and the accompanying video clips.

A great stroll down memory lane and actually a pretty good overview of the attitude and mores of late 60’s and early 70’s.

This lengthy movie is base on a true story. A very good overview has been published in Men’s Journal online and I will give you excerpts here to review the storyline: “

Fifteen years after an enigmatic 24-year-old walked Into the Wild, the site of his death has become a shrine. As Hollywood weighs in with a portrait of the young man as a saintlike visionary, has the truth been lost? Inside the strange life and tragic death of “Alexander Supertramp.” –Matthew Power

“Fifteen years have passed: 15 howling Alaska winters and 15 brief frenzied summers, and the ancient bus on the Stampede Trail still rusts in the wilderness, almost exactly as Chris McCandless left it. Twenty-two miles from the nearest road, shaded out by alder and black spruce on a moraine rise above a creek, the green and white WWII-vintage International Harvester looks surreally out of place, like an artifact from a vanished civilization. The bus doesn’t at first seem a likely time capsule of American mythology, a shrine to which people from around the world make pilgrimages and leave tributes in memory of a young man whom they see as a fallen hero. It doesn’t look to be the sort of place that would inspire a best-selling book, much less a major motion picture. But that’s exactly what it is. Fireweed and wild potato grow up in the wheel wells. On the side of the bus fairbanks 142 is still legible in paint that has been bleached and scoured by the seasons. A few bullet holes have starred the windows; whether they were fired out of anger or boredom is unclear. Other than that, the people who have made the trek out here, out of respect or superstition, have left the site largely untouched. The vertebrae of the young moose McCandless shot lie scattered. The bones, and a smattering of feathers, add to the spooky aura of a charnel ground. Inside, near an old oil-barrel stove, McCandless’s jeans are neatly folded on a shelf, knees patched with scraps of an old army blanket, seat patched with duct tape. And the bed is still there too, springs and stuffing bursting from the stained mattress, as if a wild animal’s been at it. The same bed where they found his body. It was a haunting tale, capturing the imagination of the country. September 1992, deep in the bush of the Alaskan interior northeast of Mount McKinley, in an abandoned bus on a disused mining trail, the decomposed body of a man was found by a moose hunter. The remains weighed only 67 pounds, and he had apparently died of starvation. He carried no identification, but a few rolls of undeveloped film and a cryptic journal chronicled a horrifying descent into sickness and slow death after 112 days alone in the wilderness. When the man’s identity was established, the puzzle only deepened. His name was Chris McCandless, a 24-year-old honors graduate from Emory University, star athlete, and beloved brother and son from a wealthy but dysfunctional East Coast family. With a head full of Jack London and Thoreau, McCandless rechristened himself “Alexander Supertramp,” cut all ties with his family, gave his trust fund to charity, and embarked on a two-year odyssey that brought him to Alaska, that mystic repository of American notions of wilderness, a blank spot on the map where he could test the limits of his wits and endurance. Setting off with little more than a .22 caliber rifle and a 10-pound bag of rice, McCandless hoped to find his true self by renouncing society and living off the land. But, as Craig Medred would note in the Anchorage Daily News, “the Alaska wilderness is a good place to test yourself. The Alaska wilderness is a bad place to find yourself.” No one ever saw McCandless alive again. Fifteen years later his story continues to resonate as a quintessentially American tale, and its hero has assumed near mythic status, blurring the lines between living memory and the creation of a legend. When writer Jon Krakauer first heard McCandless’s story, he later told a reporter, “the hair on my neck rose.” Krakauer’s profound empathy for his subject and obsessive research yielded Into the Wild, a heartbreaking portrait that has sold more than 2 million copies and become the authoritative version of the McCandless story, around which all discussions are framed. In Krakauer’s telling, McCandless represents the human urge to push the limits of experience, to live a life untouched by the trappings of culture and civilization. Now that portrait has been taken up by the ultimate mythologizer: Hollywood. This film was written and directed by Sean Penn and filmed on location in the many places McCandless traveled. Woven through with the timeless themes of self-invention, risk, and our complex relationship to the natural world, the enigma of Chris McCandless is once again being debated, more vociferously than ever. Was his death a Shakespearean tragedy or a pitch-black comedy of errors? What impact has the tale and its renown had on our perception of Alaska? And perhaps most tantalizingly: Did Krakauer, and now Penn, get key parts of the story wrong? ” This is a short summary compared to the 2 hour and 38 minute film. It was a haunting movie – even when you already knew the outcome. It was a sad movie because of the outcome. This is another one of those movies that makes you think. I came away conflicted. I appreciated that this young millenial student rejected his calling to be narcissistic and unproductive and struck out to find the meaning of life. Dramatized in the end is the true essence of reality in that we cannot successfully get through this world alone. We may reject the world but we should not reject human relationships. Many questions could be raised about why he didn’t look for an alternative way to cross the river and get back to society after he had survived the worst of the Alaskan Winter. Why did he not get more prepared in wilderness survival? Did he become mentally unbalanced as a result of the isolation from people or was he really potentially schizophrenic? Did he really not want to go back to civilization after he had accomplished his goal and simply gave up? One could attempt to psychoanalyze for decades but we will never have the real answer. What are the great lessons learned here? Part of happiness in living comes from the interpersonal relationships with other human organisms. Some solitude is often necessary so that we can listen to that still small voice by whatever name you want to call it. And, there can be joy in life without “stuff.” The bottom line is one must know their limits and everything must be done in moderation. See the movie. I would suspect it will speak to you. Maybe not the same way it did to me or to anyone else for that matter. I do think it speaks to us at whatever place we are in our journey of life. And like anything else, too many movies like this can be hazardous to your mental health. We all need a little slap-stick humor, vampire horror, gratuitous violence, and film noir drama from time to time.

What an intellectual movie. Some critics feel that there was too much dialog; other felt that there was little action and therefore panned the movie or called it biased. For a movie to directly address some of the issues facing this country today and the political polarization that goes on, I feel that this is perhaps one of the most unbiased and realistic expose of our present time. The movie actually has 2 major subplots which are dramatically interrelated. Storyline one deals with a political science professor who seems to be able to inspire his students to take a real look around themselves. He calls a young student into his office, a typical millenial, who started out being participative but while still making excellent grades, never comes to class anymore. As the movie shifts back and forth between story lines, the true “generation me” characteristics of the student become extremely evident. The students want it all for the least amount of effort and involvement. The true narcissistic nature of this generation is exemplified here. The second storyline involves a young up and coming senator, who although unequivacally says he isn’t running for president, who offers a once top knotch reporter an “exclusive” story on a new initiative that is going to “win the war on terror” and to bring her back to a level of professionalism beyond the “if it bleeds it reads” of today’s tabloid journalism. As the new initiative is being generally described you see flashes to the actual inept military attempt at execution of the “latest and greatest” strategy to win the war on terror which involves two former students of our political science professor who became so concerned about the world situation they felt compelled to enlist in the army. While this could be considered a third plot, it is actually the link between the two major ones. To tell you any more about the movie plot would give it away and in order for this movie to serve its true purpose, you must see it unfold slowly with the dialog so that you can really appreciate the potential power (destructive as well as constructive) of the press; the pursuit of political aspiration in this country with little regard for who it impacts; and the attempt of a college professor who has an uncanny insight into the true potential of a young student and tries to convince him to develop that potential to the fullest. As an educator, this movie presents a true picture of the deterioriation of our society from a number of areas. From the classrooms and poor parental upbringing, poor educational systems, and the coddling of a new society of what will become narcissistic drones incapable of producing any work product as well as the way the press cohorts with aspiring politicians who are not serving in the best interests of the country but rather are playing it like a video game – always attempting to get to the next level regardless of who you have to step on to get there and ethics are thrown to the four winds. A final observation is that it also depicts the poor planning of our military based on faulty intelligence (or lack thereof). The title was taken from a comment made by a German officer during World War I, who said of the British army, “Never have I seen such lions led by such lambs.”

This recently released movie stars Samuel L. Jackson, Julianna Moore, and Edie Falco among others. A very stellar cast and some great acting. If you didn’t read a review of this movie and were depending only on the interest sparked by watching the trailer at the theater, you will be greatly surprised. Although a most depressing movie, it is very well done and thought provoking. While I am not a fan of Julianne Moore and have always considered her a more animated cryer like Merryl Streep, she played the part so effectively and hysterically I hated her even more. Well, let’s get down to the plot … and yes, I am going to spoil it for you. So, if you don’t want to read any further, I can understand. The movie opens with Moore stumbling into the emergency room with bloody hands. She told the investigators she was carjacked. Then she revealed that her 4 year old son was in the car. This apparently happened near a “project” much like Cabriny Green in Chicago. She is Caucasian. Her brother, a police officer in a nearby predominantly white precinct, overreacts and the project essentially gets quaranteened hoping the residents will give up the culprit. Samuel L. Jackson, who is an officer in that precinct, senses that something is amiss. He arranges a search scenario in which Edie Falco, whose child was abducted 10 years previous and never found, psychologically manuevers Moore into admitting that she wasn’t carjacked and that she had actually buried her dead son two days previous. As a result of poor parenting, the child accidentally overdoses on cough medicine. Secondarily, useless riot breaks out in the project. It is easy to understand overreaction on all sides and makes you wonder why we “really can’t all just get along.” You empathsize with all sides in this which leave you conflicted and somewhat disturbed. But it does make you think. It takes a bit for the various plotlines to unfold and it certainly doesn’t start out as a prescriptive movie. Samuel L. Jackson, Ron Eldard, and Edie Falco are stellar. Julianna Moore certainly plays the character to a hysterical tee and through most of the movie you just want to slap her senseless. If you are looking for humor, levity, or mindless entertainment, see Date Movie. If you are in a mood for deep thoughts and have a couple of hours to kill and plan on taking mood elevators later, see Freedomland. I give it 3 out of 4 stars.

Basic premise here is concert cellist with domineering father has one night stand with Irish guitar player and lead singer in a band. It’s love at first site. Girl’s father presses her on, lovers miss each other at rendesvous point, girl is pregnant, has child, father tells her still born, child winds up in orphanage for 11 years and “hears the music in the universe.” Child runs away from orphanage, hooks up with Oliver Twist-like street musician, can play any instrument on cue, continues to wander around, winds up as child prodigy at Julliard, and writes rhapsody to be performed at annual concert in the park. Mother finds out, starts searching for child, winds up as guest cellist at same annual concert. Father’s current girlfriend leaves him, he reunites with brothers and they crank their band back up, he winds up also in New York while searching for lost love. You get the picture to the ending. One of those “Ultimate Gift” happy endings. Nonetheless, worth the price of admission. In the beginning, you wonder if this kid is a few cards short of a full deck – maybe autistic or idiot savant. Well, he winds up just being gifted and a little bit naive for today’s 12 yr olds. Jonathan Rhys-Myers does a great job as the Irish musician a la the same brooding shown as King Henry in the Tudors. Freddie Highmore does a great job as the run away prodigy looking for parents. Although in the final scenes when conducting his Rhapsody, one would expect him to be a little more in musical beat rather than looking like a flapping penguin. Obviously a bad bit of dubbing. Robin Williams is the Oliver Twist Fagin and although good hearted at times is typically mercenary, and typically overacted. He is the character you love to hate and cheer when he gets bashed with a guitar. Keri Russell plays the cellist mom and does a good job. She is the new Meryl Streep looking frazzled and like she is going to burst into tears every time the camera shows her. She could have done something with her hair other than just sticking her finger in a lamp socket. Anyway once you cut through the schmultz, the movie has its moments and if you are truly moved by the power of music, then this movie will speak to you. EW gave it a D+, I would give it a C, and it is certainly better than watching stale reruns on TV. Don’t buy any concessions and you will then feel better about the price of admissions.

Timothy Olyphant retains some of his persona from his recent bad guy role in Die Hard or Live Free albeit shaved head and bar code tatoo. The movie is based on the video game. A simple mindless premise of contract killer who gets framed by the company while being pursued by a relentless lawman played by Douhray Scott. The movie is very formularic and a basic plot you have seen before. However, if you are looking for some basic entertainment with a mixture of martial arts, gunslinging, and head buts, then the movie is for you. Not a bad matinee time killer with sufficient gratuitous violence to at least make Monday a relatively serene day back at work.

This is another screen adaptation of one of Stephen King’s books. Cujo meets Starship Troopers on the set of The Birds after mutating with War of the Worlds and Alien as they came through Stargate. In fact it even had touches of The Mummy Returns (a la Brandon Fraser).The movie is very formularic and is definitely an interesting study in group think and makes you understand why people like Jim Jones can get a following. Special effects were ok but too mechanical for my tastes. The movie was two plus hours, but not tedious. It would seem that after all the carnage a relatively tasteful ending would be best. Most of the critics rave about the daring ending. I found the ending to be extremely horrific from a disgusting standpoint and in extremely bad taste. It provides a shock, which I am sure is the goal, but it was tasteless and leaves you wanting for restitution from the director. For horror movie fans, it’s matinee fodder, but don’t buy any concessions or you will feel you have wasted too much money on this typical King movie. If you leave just before the movie ends, it will leave a better taste in your mouth. The only real adaptation on a King novel worth its salt was The Shining and nothing he has written or ever will write again will top that thanks to Jack Nicholson.

Another long movie, 2 hours and 38 minutes, and based on a true story. From Wikipedia: “Frank Lucas (born September 9, 1930 in Lenoir County, North Carolina) was a heroin dealer and organized crime boss in Harlem during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was particularly known for cutting out middlemen in the drug trade and buying heroin directly from his source in Southeast Asia. He organized the smuggling of heroin from Vietnam to the U.S. by using the coffins of dead American servicemen (“cadaver connection”)” In the film, Lucas is portrayed by Actor Denzel Washington. Lucas and his former competitor, Nicky Barnes, sat down with New York magazine’s Mark Jacobson recently for a historic conversation between men who have not spoken to each other in 30 years. The story has two underlying aspects: (1) the rise of an African-American drug lord who used the principal of buying in bulk and underselling the competition while providing a superior product. It is sad to see the money made on addiction of your own people who are socioeconomically deprived – particularly in the era of segregation. It also demonstrated the closeness of family and demonstrated that family can be your downfall regardless of how careful you may be. The other storyline revolves around an honest cop surrounded by crooked cops on the take from the other drug lords. While his dedication to his job and sheer honesty he loses his wife and child through divorce while he is a beat cop attending law school at night. In the end, justice prevails and our honest cop get the bad guy, cleans up the police department, and passes the bar exam. While the story doesn’t go further with the cops career after he passes the bar exam, a supertitle at the end tells us that he becomes a defense attorney and his first client is our bad guy, Frank Lucas, who is doing a 70 year prison term. Frank’s story is one of incongruities. On one side he is a sophisticated businessman stressing honesty, integrity, hard work, and family; and on the other side he could kill someone without flinching. It is truly a story of a homegrown American Gangster competing with the tradition and organization of the Mafia for the almighty dollar. It was sheer ingenuity how he established the drug connection with the Viet Nam drug producers, cutting out the middle men. Another 2 hour and 40 minute movie. This one is most likely in the running for oscars, probably more for the acting of both Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, rather than a Best Movie. But look out for Russell Crowe getting the nod as well for his spectacular performance in the western remake, 3:10 to Yuma. I liked this move although I would have like to have seen a little more gratuitous violence in the style of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, since it was a gangster movie, but it’s still worth taking a look.

Caught up in an adulterous affair with his brother Andy’s wife (Marisa Tomei), Hank (Ethan Hawke) digs himself into a deep hole when he agrees to rob a mom-&-pop jewelry store at Andy’s insistence. Hank’s pressing financial problems are nothing compared to the spiraling trouble he gets in when the robbery goes bad, since the jewelry store in question belongs to Hank’s and Andy’s parents. Director Sidney Lumet (“Dog Day Afternoon”) twists suspense around terrific ensemble performances in screenwriter Kelly Masterson’s character-driven crime thriller that is at turns sexy, hilarious and devastating. Philip Seymour Hoffman is outstanding as the cunning Andy, and Albert Finney priceless as the father whose sons betray him. The title comes from an Irish saying, “May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you’re dead.” 50 years ago Sidney Lumet directed his first film, the courtroom drama “12 Angry Men.” It earned Lumet his first Academy Award nomination for directing, though he lost to the great David Lean for “Bridge on the River Kwai.” Since then, Lumet has been nominated for directing three more times (“Dog Day Afternoon,” “Network” and “The Verdict”). Some of his other films include “Serpico,” “Equus,” “The Wiz”, “Prince of the City” (for which he was Oscar nominated for co-writing the screenplay) and “Running on Empty.” He finally received an honorary Oscar in 2005. Now, five decades after he started, Lumet should earn directing nomination number five with “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.” With so many “directors” making movies today, it is inspiring to see a master like Lumet, still going strong at the young age of 83, leave most of them in the dust. Lumet has always been able to tell a story like nobody else, and here he produces some of his greatest work ever. By showing the robbery in the opening few minutes, and then piecing together the film with flashback, Lumet shows a masters’ touch behind the camera. And he has chosen a cast that is more than equal to the task at hand. Hoffman, in his first true lead role since winning the Oscar for “Capote,” is a bull of a man, a walking ball of furious energy. If I had to compare him to more familiar actors, it would be Lee J. Cobb or Brian Denehey. In fact, I can see him in another ten years (he just turned 40) following those actors in the role of Willie Loman in “Death of a Salesman”. Hawke is his equal here, showing a range only hinted at in “Training Day.” Tomei brings a sense of sadness to her role, one that is even braver as she’s often in various stages of undress. As the father who attempts to find out the truth, no matter what, Finney proves to be a wounded bear of a man. Lumet’s “Network” earned an incredible five acting nominations come Oscar time (three wins) and I wouldn’t be surprised to see “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” earn a solid four.