Alice in Wonderland ***

Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter,
Anne Hathaway, Crispin Glover, Matt Lucas, Stephen Fry
Michael Sheen, Alan Rickman, Marton Csokas, Timothy Spall

Lewis Carroll's books of Alice in Wonderland have been adapted into movie form since the medium began. From silent versions to the subversive animation of 1950's Disney to Jan Svankmajer; Alice's story has always fascinated artists who tend to explore the horror that lies in the innocent.
It makes sense that Tim Burton would want to do his own version, and even if it's not the definitive take fans of the filmmaker were expecting it to be, it's a lovely ride and one of Burton's most mature films to date.
Taking Carroll's text for a spin, he makes Alice (Wasikowska) a nineteen year old girl about to be married to a man she barely knows.
Encouraged by her deceased father (Csokas) to use her imagination and spoiled by the dreams she's had all her life about strange characters and a mysterious land, she follows a white rabbit (voiced by Sheen) on the day of her engagement.
She falls inside an all too familiar hole in the ground where she finds the door to Underland, a place populated by weird characters who insist she's come to fulfill a prophecy.
Soon she learns that not only she has been there before (creating an interest dilemma between what reality is in dreams while giving Disney the opportunity to make endless sequels relying on this concept) but this time in particular she's set to end the reign of the evil Red Queen (Carter) and hand the crown to her sister the benevolent White Queen (Hathaway).
Alice teams up with Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Lucas), the Cheshire cat (Fry), the blue caterpillar Ebsolem (Rickman) and the Mad Hatter (Depp), among more famous characters, as she explores this wonderland and learns lessons for her own life.
Obviously stuck somewhere between the director's vision and the studio's demands Alice in Wonderland is uneven in narrative terms as it struggles between the edge of Burton and Carroll, with the status quo preserving by way of forced naivete Disney specializes in (it's surprising but the animated version is much darker than this).
Therefore we see how Burton inserts his dark humor and macabre nature by way of the art direction, concealed symbols and unexpected character quirks.
In this way Hathaway's, Nigela Lawson-inspired, White Queen takes an aim at social terms of perfection with a lunatic side (watch as the actress deliciously travels from Barbie to Chucky in seconds), Carter indulges in the oddity of her character's construction (her giant head and blood red lips are almost iconic), while Depp surprisingly underacts his way out of the Hatter's madness, creating a character that moves more than it disturbs (his character's post traumatic stress disorder might be a bit too facile but also allows Burton to take a subtle aim at the effects of war).
Perhaps it served Burton to tone down his darkness because the film achieves a calm and sense of equilibrium that allows both opposing visions to co-exist and deliver entertainment that's clever and simple.
In many ways the film is more shaped after The Wizard of Oz than any previous incarnation of the Alice story and in the same way frames the protagonist's adventure against unconscious manifestations.
At first Burton stresses too much what "real life" character will inspire each Wonderland inhabitant but soon this becomes an opportunity to decipher if Burton finally found a way to comment on the power of dreams.
The fact that this Alice often wonders out loud if she's inside a dream doesn't make her smarter than Oz's Dorothy, but serves as a well meant, if underwritten, attempt to encompass female liberation and the Industrial Revolution overthrowing Victorianism.
For all the flaws in Alice in Wonderland we are rewarded with lush scenery, extremely thought out character design and a filmmaker surprisingly finding marvels under restraint.
Like his heroine, Burton enters a land that thrives with the promise of unknown terror but his ability to refresh his aesthetics despite compromise is the real wonder.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street **

Director: Tim Burton
Cast: Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter
Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, Sacha Baron Cohen
Jamie Campbell Bower, Jayne Wisener, Ed Sanders

Based on Stephen Sondheim's beloved musical, Tim Burton does a great job adapting it into cinematic form, but in the process has lost some of the urgency and majesty of the source material.
Johnny Depp plays Benjamin Barker, a barber who is sent to prison by Judge Turpin (Rickman) so he can keep his wife and daughter.
Fifteen years later, Barker, who has now taken the name of Sweeney Todd, returns to London and sets shop above Mrs. Lovett's (Bonham Carter) pie store, where he begins to device his revenge.
But as Mrs. Lovett reminds him the best part about this would be to "plan the plan" and while Sweeney sharpens his knives (who he calls his friends), Mrs. Lovett finds herself content with the company of this man who she loves.
On the other side of town, a young sailor (Campbell Bower) has become infatuated with Johanna (Wisener), Sweeney's daughter who is being held captive by Judge Turpin. Luckily for Sweeney, he becomes involved in a plan to rescue her, but more than having his daughter back his mind is set in revenge and after a failed attempt to murder Judge Turpin, he decides that now he will take revenge on everyone.
Just like that and the film's flaws begin with this rushed decision; if it wasn't for the fact that the music becomes louder, Burton sets the visuals and Depp raises his voice we wouldn't know that a big twist has occurred.
More than character development, this event just pushes the plot forward, because soon Sweeney is slashing people's throats so that Mrs. Lovett can make pies out of the deceased.
Depp does fine work as Sweeney, but whoever thinks he is proving his versatility is blinded by the fact that now he sings. Someone should give the man a role that doesn't require for him to be covered in makeup and act weird.
His lackluster performance is the film's biggest detractor. Perhaps he shouldn't have been loud and morbid, but he is nothing. You can not detect a single emotion in Depp's Todd. And it wouldn't be fair to say that to be soul-less was the intention, because you should at least feel the rage that inspires his revenge and turns him mad.
The best thing in the film, along with the gothic visuals, might be Bonham Carter's performance.
You never know what on Earth this woman sees in Sweeney, but the actress, whose singing voice is a whispery tease, brings the only life the film has.
While she might seem like "The Corpse Bride" come to life, you miss her when she's not onscreen. Her scenes with little Toby (Sanders), who develops a protective crush on her, are the only times when the film achieves any evidence of real emotion.
As grotesque and morbid as it all may sound, the monochromatic color scheme, the dreariness of the settings and the overtly Tim Burton-ness of the film can't cover the dark satire contained in Sondheim's work.
When the film reaches its complex final twist, where there should be tears and gasps, you feel a void which is covered by buckets of fake blood that fill the spaces where emotions should've been.
It should feel appropriate that a film so filled with death had been extracted of all its life.
Somehow it just doesn't.