Todd’s story was adapted countless times over the last couple of centuries, but the most notable in recent times was the 1979 Broadway musical by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler, itself based on a 1973 play by Christopher Bond. The play and musical added greater depth to the story by transforming it into a macabre tale of tragedy and revenge, and now director Tim Burton has adapted the musical into a Hollywood film.

Sweeney Todd (Burton-favourite Johnny Depp) was once Benjamin Barker, a meek and mild barber living in London with a beautiful wife and child. But when the slimy Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) coverts Barker’s wife, he frames the barber and has him transported to Australia; now, 15 years later, Barker returns to London as Todd, a man devoured by thoughts of revenge.

Alas, once in London, Todd learns from his landlady Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) that his wife poisoned herself, and from there he loses his last shred of humanity. His planned revenge on the Judge, once frustrated, transforms into revenge upon society as a whole, and his killing spree results in the perfect ingredient for Lovett’s hitherto inedible meat pies.

Once again, Burton’s involvement is self-evident: his Gothic sensibilities fit perfectly with this Dickensian London that seems to exist in the bowels of hell. If there’s a contemporary musical that Burton was born to adapt to the screen, it’s this. Unfortunately, Burton’s sense of whimsy and playfulness is (for the most part) sorely missed here. The one sequence that allows him a chance to inject the lighter part of his personality into the proceedings is “By the Sea” — a much-needed moment of respite from the grim goings-on throughout the rest of the film — but for the bulk of the running time, we’re treated to angst punctuated by copious blood-letting.

Furthermore, things really slow to a crawl during the romantic subplot between Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower) and Johanna (Jayne Wisener), which only has a tangential connection to the main story and isn’t engaging in the slightest. On the other hand, Sacha Baron Cohen is delightful as the rival barber Pirelli, but, of course, his part is short-lived (no pun intended).

The curious thing about Sweeney Todd is that, for a mainstream film, the audience seems quite limited. There’s far too much blood for your average musical fan, yet far too much singing for most filmgoers willing to put up with the gore. And I must emphasise that there’s a lot of singing — hardly any dialogue is actually spoken — and the melodies aren’t particularly memorable, either. I know I’m sounding like an uneducated philistine here, but ultimately there seemed to be a lot to admire about the film but little to actually like about it. This may be one of Burton’s most accomplished films, but it’s also one of his most emotionally distant. I’ll take Ed Wood or even Sleepy Hollow over this any day of the week.

Put simply, this is Burton at his darkest and most gruesome. The craft on display is impeccable, but the film itself feels cold, keeping the audience at arm’s length. Perhaps, like Todd’s own victims, his story has been recycled for consumption that many times that the servings may seem more appetising than they really are.

On one level, American Gangster is the true story of the rise and fall of Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), a self-made man who became Harlem’s heroin kingpin in the 1970s by directly importing his product from Thailand and cutting out the middleman. Lucas was a true entrepreneur, applying a ruthlessly capitalistic philosophy to the drug trade — he undercut the competition (who just happened to be the Mafia) by offering twice the quality at half the price.

On a deeper level, however, the film is about police corruption. Scott and screenwriter Steven Zaillian seem to contend that dirty cops are even worse than the criminals they bully. Washington’s Lucas adheres to his own (albeit twisted) code of ethics — he will snap quickly and mercilessly at anyone who betrays his trust, but he only does what he thinks he needs to do in pursuit of his business goals. The sleazy Detective Trupo (Josh Brolin), on the other hand, has no honour, instead abusing his power in order to extort as much money as possible from the men he should be arresting. Trupo, it seems, is the real bad guy here.

Richie Roberts (Crowe), meanwhile, is caught in the middle. He’s a man who straddles both sides of the fence: staunchly moral when it comes to the temptation of corruption, he nonetheless associates with “wiseguys” after-hours because these were the friends he grew up with. Charged with tracking down the “big fish” in the drug trade, Roberts finds opposition mostly from the police who live off the kickbacks and don’t wish to see their sources of income disappear. And after all, Roberts was the man who (so legend had it) turned in $1 million in cash.

Scott’s ability to evoke the time and place in which the film is set is never out of balance, feeling both contemporary yet still of its time. The soundtrack is excellent, but the costuming in particular is a key part of the narrative: Lucas eschews the gaudy ’70s pimp-style outfit (a “clown suit” he remarks at one point), instead preferring a suit and tie in order to remain low-key. A distinction is clearly drawn between Lucas — a businessman who dresses appropriately — and the hedonists who simply wish to live (and die) to excess.

The performances are excellent. Washington is both charismatic and menacing as Lucas, while Crowe’s turn is more understated than usual but still passionate under the surface — his most surprising scenes are where Roberts fumbles in courtrooms due to his fear of public speaking.

What separates American Gangster from many other films in the genre are the parallels drawn by Lucas (and by extension, Scott and Zaillian) between American-style capitalism and his methods of drug distribution. At one point, he even discusses branding and trademark infringement, citing Pepsi and General Motors as examples. This was a forward-thinking businessman in an unconventional business.

This is perhaps not Scott’s best film, nor the best in the history of gangster/crime films, but it’s certainly one of the better examples of both.

The film opens with a protracted intro featuring an argument between apparently-in-love couple Holly (Swank) and Gerry (Gerard Butler) over a comment Gerry made to Holly’s mother earlier that evening. Rather than establishing how right for each other this couple is, this scene merely sets up the characters as being rather unlikeable and one-dimensional. The whole thing comes off as rather cliched.

After the opening credits, we find out that Gerry has since died of a brain tumour, and by the end of the first act, it’s been revealed that he’d created a scheme whereby Holly will receive a series of letters from him “beyond the grave” over the coming months. These letters, of course, are designed to ease Holly out of her grief and into a new life.

The main problem here is that the theme of dealing with grief isn’t really addressed in any kind of meaningful way. Sure, Holly’s mother (played by the always dependable Kathy Bates) admonishes her for not getting on with life, and Gerry’s letters at least get her out and active again, but Holly is so passive throughout that I didn’t ever feel that she really dealt with her sense of loss so much as coasted through it.

In the context of the story itself, the letters from Gerry actually seem strangely cruel. Although they do get Holly to participate in life again, it’s life with the spectre of Gerry hanging over it, whether it be a round of karaoke (just as she’d once done while he was alive) or a trip to his homeland of Ireland.

Of course, the real reason for the letters is to allow flashbacks detailing the romance between Gerry and Holly. It’s the transparency of this contrivance that lets the film down the most, and yet it’s the whole hook of the story.

This isn’t a bad film — it’s just rather flat. But with so many better films out there, I can’t see any real reason to recommend this one.

Ever since 1988′s Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Robert Zemeckis has increasingly relied on CGI technology in making films such as Death Becomes Her, Forrest Gump and Contact. But it was his animated adaptation of The Polar Express in 2004 where he pushed so-called “motion-capture” technology to its limits, and now, three years later, he revisits it with Beowulf.

The film is, of course, based on the epic poem of the same name, but screenwriters Neil Gaiman (MirrorMask) and Roger Avary (Pulp Fiction, The Rules of Attraction) have crafted a modernised, coherent narrative out of the ancient source text. Here they assume an unreliable narrator in the source, and so Beowulf, originally a singularly heroic character, becomes a flawed man instead. Whether this works for or against the film is open to debate, but it’s hard not to admire the attempt to craft a thematically-unified three-act screenplay out of a poem that was never designed for such.

What deserves greater discussion, however, is the motion-capture technology itself. In The Polar Express, we had a situation that seemed like the worst of both worlds: too artificial to be fully convincing yet too lifelike to think of it as pure animation — it was as if Tom Hanks’ zombie twin had started dancing in Toontown. In Beowulf, things are greatly improved, but it often looks like a videogame cutscene rather than a bona fide film. (This technique would be perfect for a Warcraft film, perhaps.)

Actors such as Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins and John Malkovich give wonderful performances, but their digital avatars seem to have lost some of the humanity that might otherwise have existed in a flesh-and-blood portrayal. Robin Wright Penn is the greatest victim to this — her character seems almost lifeless when it comes to facial expressions. On the other hand, Angelina Jolie as Grendel’s mother is photo-realistic and totally convincing.

Something I noticed as I watched Beowulf was how subtle movements were very natural, but broader gesticulation gave the game away — it’s mostly how the characters move that’s the problem, not necessarily how they look.

There are, however, amazing sights to behold, including a battle with a dragon that is truly spectacular, and a flashback involving creatures of the deep that leaves you breathless. Yet the technology hamstrings the efforts of both the actors and screenwriters, and so the spectacle has little weight to it since we really don’t care about the characters. It all feels a bit hollow, like something crucial is missing.

The saddest part is that the creative team have obviously tried their best to create a film with some depth and subtlety as well action and excitement, but the technology has yet to mature. As it is, Beowulf is an interesting and often fun experiment that strives for greatness but still misses the mark.

So it’s an incredible irony that Bay seems to have redeemed himself with Transformers, a film based on a line of toys of all things. Bay’s film not only delivers on its promise of a fun popcorn movie, it revels in its frivolity; this is the film that the abysmal Independence Day wanted so desperately to be, all those years ago.

As the Transformers mythology goes, two warring factions of giant alien robots — the benevolent Autobots and the evil Decepticons — left their homeworld of Cybertron for Earth, where their eternal battle continues. Here they take the forms of ordinary vehicles and devices: leading the Autobots is Optimus Prime, a heroic figure who transforms into a truck and gets to pontificate about freedom and the virtues of humanity, while heading the Decepticons is Megatron, who used to transform into a gun but in the film appears as a jet.

Any man who was a pre-teen in the mid-to-late ’80s probably knows all of this anyway. If nothing else, we all watched the animated series and have some vague expectations for the characterisation of each Transformer, particularly Prime and Megatron, but also fan favourites such as Bumblebee and Starscream. By and large, these characters are recreated fairly faithfully, but it’s true that the humans, not the Transformers, are the focus of the film.

Having the humans dominate proceedings would perhaps have been more problematic were the script not as fun or engaging as it is. There are moments of humour and whimsy sprinkled throughout the film that only occasionally fall flat — Bernie Mac in particular has a cameo that is absolutely hilarious (though potentially offensive to some). Full credit must be given, however, to Shia LaBeouf, who essentially carries Transformers during its slower scenes through sheer charisma alone. Also always nice to see is John Turturro in a supporting role, but the appearance of Jon Voight has to be the most surreal bit of casting since Orson Welles voiced Unicron in the animated Transformers film 21 years ago.

Of course, it’s the third act where the real robot-on-robot action occurs, and this is the payoff for all the exposition of the prior 90 minutes. A kinetic energy takes hold, and suddenly you’re watching two robots destroy the entire floor of an office building, for example, causing destruction and mayhem on such a scale that you can’t help but be awestruck. One can only assume that the sequel will be even bigger.

Sure, there’s a plot that’s buried beneath all this, involving metallic cubes, sexy love interests and pairs of glasses on eBay, but it’s just window-dressing to introduce the premise of this new franchise. Ordinarily, I’d feel insulted by this, but it’s done with such good humour that it’s hard to fault the film for not aspiring towards high art.

Maybe Steven Spielberg (as executive producer) is responsible for Transformers‘ sense of childlike giddiness; I don’t know. All I know is, it succeeds at being a fun and entertaining movie, and that’s all it should need to be.

Michael Clayton (Clooney) is a “fixer” in a legal firm in New York, troubleshooting the unexpected and cleaning up other people’s messes. He doesn’t particularly enjoy his job, which seems closer to legal janitorial work than anything of great significance, and his personal life is spiralling out of control with a failed business venture, a gambling addiction and mounting debts. When Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), one of the firm’s top partners and an old friend of Clayton’s, has a spectacular manic episode during a filmed deposition, Clayton is once again relied upon to rectify the situation.

On the surface, this film concerns the kind of corporate greed that puts the bottom line ahead of ordinary people’s lives, but there’s something more fundamental going on here. Edens, through a series of rants brought about by his unmedicated bipolar disorder, talks about the filth and taint that he’s accumulated over the years in his role of defending the indefensible. On the other end of the spectrum is Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton), the lead counsel for the company U/North (whom Edens was defending), who effectively sells her soul in order to please her masters, willing to sacrifice any moral code she may possess. Clayton seems somewhere in the middle, caught in an amoral malaise that seems both endless and futile.

The four main stars are all excellent. Clooney’s Clayton is clearly a man fed-up with his job — his eyes and facial tics betray the years of having to fix the problems of people who seem least deserving of help. Swinton, meanwhile, plays Crowder as a woman clearly over her head and looking for easy answers, and you can see on her face a barely contained panic that could surface at any moment. Sydney Pollack as Marty Bach, another partner at the firm, is, of course, as reliable as ever, giving his character an edge and sense of menace that might not have been there otherwise.

I was, however, well prepared for Tom Wilkinson to resort to scene chewing as the manic depressive Arthur Edens, but he’s consistently on-note. One scene in particular has Edens raving one moment yet completely lucid the next, and yet Wilkinson pulls off the transition seamlessly.

Gilroy, as both writer and director, has achieved something few manage to pull off: a confident yet understated, intelligent directorial debut. This is not a film that necessarily signals the arrival of a great auteur, but its quality and craftsmanship serve it well nonetheless.