Fall Movie Preview 2007

"He shaved the faces of gentlemen/who never thereafter were heard of again." So goes the Stephen Sondheim lyric describing Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of London's Fleet Street in the nineteenth century. Yes, Johnny Depp takes the title role in Tim Burton's film of the greatest Broadway musical of the past century. And, yes, Depp sings. Borat himself, Sacha Baron Cohen, is Sweeney's rival. And Helena Bonham Carter plays Mrs. Lovett, the landlady who bakes Sweeney's victims into hot pies. Sondheim's operatic blood bath is not for every taste. But it's still man devouring man out there, and who are we to deny it at the multiplex?