Sweeney Todd, 11/30.

"Well I'm just in from Sweeney Todd and it's utterly magnificent," announces David Ehrenstein. "A perfect melding of the sensibilities of Sondheim and Tim Burton in ways I couldn't quite imagine working until I saw the finished film. Johnny Depp is not only a great star he is a cinematic genius. Helena Bonham Carter is perfect as Mrs Lovett. Alan Rickman and Timothy Spall were born to play Judge Turpin and Beadle Bramford (respectively)."

For David Carr, "This film displays a director in his prime, with a fully realized execution - sorry about that - of one of Broadway's darkest fables."

Updated through 12/6.

"[T]he most important movie of 2007," declares Tom O'Neil. "Certainly, it's the best I've seen all year, although, of course, I'm a bit biased as a diehard fan of the Broadway show."

Updates, 12/3: "Sweeney Todd will earn a rash of Oscar nominations, including cinematography, production design, costumes, and Depp," predicts Anne Thompson, who also rounds up more reactions - not reviews!

"The movie's sense of humor, when not dripping blood, is a bit limited," writes David Poland - and yes, this is a review. "This is unusual for Burton, but the subject is more directly serious than any other film he's ever made. This is not a fairy tale. There is symbolism and non-literalism, but it's a harsh, brutal story about loss and revenge and the futility of our rage... and Burton has embraced that tone completely, along with his actors."

"Where much could have gone wrong, things have turned out uniformly right thanks to highly focused direction by Tim Burton, expert screw-tightening by scenarist John Logan, and haunted and musically adept lead performances from Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter," writes Variety's Todd McCarthy. "schewing trademark mannerisms and flights of fancy, and yet fully imprinting the film with his signature, Burton strongly delivers the dark core of this story of a lower-class London barber whose thirst for revenge against a venal judge gives birth to a prodigious serial killer."

"The show couldn't have fallen into better hands," writes the Hollywood Reporter's Kirk Honeycutt. "More akin to Burton's Sleepy Hollow, where heads rolled like so many bowling balls, his Sweeney Todd places its emphasis on Grand Guignol and the deeply human story of twice-lost love and the horrifying destructiveness of revenge." And so: "Depp is the movie's heart and guts."

"Depp and Rickman intone their lyrics like villains in a parable, with Rickman's guttural bass particularly haunting," writes David D'Arcy for Screen Daily. "Bonham-Carter has a flair for pies of dust and soot, but her small creaky voice doesn't put terror (or much of anything else) in your heart. The 'hole in the world that's a big black pit,' of which Sweeney Todd sings doesn't seem so threatening here. Where's the horror?"

Update, 12/6: Online viewing tips. Via everybody, 9 clips.

Posted by dwhudson at November 30, 2007 6:47 AM