Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) Director: Tim Burton

Oooooh, Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd is absolutely delicious and bathed in claret. I love Burton's dark and beautiful vision so to have him able to slit throats to his heart's content is a real treat. This is an outstanding film and Johnny Depp, as Todd, is chilling and tortured. It's a tale of lost love, of revenge and the complete destruction of two central characters. I found it all highly romantic.

This is a film with lots of singing. Apparently, some donuts went into the film not knowing this, walked out and then complained of false advertising. We don't want those type of people watching great films. They need to stick to Vampies Suck! or something as highbrow for them. The songs in Todd make sense and carry the story. Some are enormously painful, such as when Mrs Lovett (the delectable Helena Bonham Carter) is singing to Todd to take notice of her and love her, others comedic in terms of Todd's rivalry with faux-Italian barber Adolfo Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen). Slightly strange at first as you do forget it is a musical, you then settle down with them and become absorbed in Burton's Victorian London.

Much has been said of the film's brutality, mainly in the form of throat slitting. I actually don't know what the fuss is about. Warnings are given out before television screenings - what are people actually expecting?! Todd slits throats and Mrs Lovett makes pies out of their bodies. The claret flows in comedy theatrical squirts, comic-esque violence, not, say, with the scary realism of Zombie's Halloween 2 (Nights in White Satin is STILL haunting me). Lap it up and enjoy it. It's exquisite.

5/5

Here is Todd singing about his bling murder weapons, innit.