Film Reviews

Times are hard in 1846 London and one must make do. Nellie Lovett adds something extra to the meat pies she peddles on Fleet Street. The secret ingredient: freshly murdered victims of her partner in crime, barber Sweeney Todd. Composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim refashions a macabre tale into a musical masterwork in this dazzling performance of the 1979 Broadway hit originally staged by Harold Prince. In her Tony-winning role, Angela Lansbury plays Nellie. George Hearn turns his stage role of twisted Sweeney into an Emmy-winning triumph. The score coils around itself in every-tightening spirals. The lines ripple with black humor and madness. Enter Sweeney's tonsorial parlor. Attend the tale.

There was nothing predictable about David Bowie - everything was designed to intrigue, to challenge, to defy all expectations. But perhaps no period in David Bowie’s extraordinary career raised more fascination, more surprise, and more questions, than the last five years.

A reporter investigating the bizarre death of a woman who leaped from a building in flames finds herself mixed up in a cult of witches who are making her part of their sacrificial ceremony during the Christmas season.

Recorded live at Hammersmith Apollo, Russell questions the values of heroes and leaders. ‘Messiah Complex’ is a disorder where sufferers think they might be the messiah. Did Jesus have it? What about Che Guevara, Gandhi, Malcolm X and Hitler? All these men have shaped our lives and influenced the way we think. Their images are used to represent ideas that often do not relate to them at all. Would Gandhi be into Apple? Would Che Guevara endorse Madonna? Would Jesus be into Christianity? He concludes it’s all a load of rubbish and encourages the audience to stop voting, ignore advertising, look to the transcendent within themselves and others...and kick over some bins on their way home. Plus there’s sex. Obviously.

Kelly Lofton is a young, successful dentist who has all the material things a woman could ask for. However, Kelly has struggled to find time for love in her busy schedule, so when her younger sister Susan gets engaged to a seemingly perfect man and organizes an extravagant engagement party, Kelly panics.

A pack of domesticated dogs go on a killing spree in southern California.

A group of young people leaves a disco and bumps into a shepherd who is ready to spend his night worshipping Satan.

Medical researcher Frank, his fiancee Zoe and their team have achieved the impossible: they have found a way to revive the dead. After a successful, but unsanctioned, experiment on a lifeless animal, they are ready to make their work public. However, when their dean learns what they've done, he shuts them down. Zoe is killed during an attempt to recreate the experiment, leading Frank to test the process on her. Zoe is revived -- but something evil is within her.

A Marine must do whatever it takes to save his kidnapped niece and stop a terrorist attack masterminded by a radical militia group.

Fight For Your Right Revisited, stars actors like Will Ferrell, Seth Rogan and Elijah Wood playing the roles of the B-Boys three members, Mike D, Ad Rock and MCA. It is a reprisal of the video the trio made for their 1987 single Fight For Your Right, and features music from the band's new album, Hot Sauce Committe Part Two. Fight For Your Right Revisited is directed by Adam Yauch, aka MCA.

Seven men have a group session and share their feelings on women, love, life and work.

Gracie knows hangovers. She's intimately acquainted with them. But this one? Why did she wake up, half-dressed, on a Florida beach, 1100 miles from home? And this time her father - who also knows about the tragedy of addiction from his struggles with Gracie's mom - isn't going to clean things up.

A professional clown and a self-indulgent count learn to help each other with their problems, but both fall in love with the same young woman.

Henry Roubier, a French promoter, and Enrico Mazzini, an Italian, have signed an agreement guaranteeing them a stranglehold on European highways. While driving on the roads of the south, Roubier takes two young hitchhikers, but an unfortunate swerve the car rushes by Henri and its occupants on the top of a pine tree onto the side of a cliff.

Based on the best selling autobiography by Irish expat Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes follows the experiences of young Frankie and his family as they try against all odds to escape the poverty endemic in the slums of pre-war Limerick. The film opens with the family in Brooklyn, but following the death of one of Frankie's siblings, they return home, only to find the situation there even worse. Prejudice against Frankie's Northern Irish father makes his search for employment in the Republic difficult despite his having fought for the IRA, and when he does find money, he spends the money on drink.