There are at least two crack­ers in this week’s line-up. First­ly, John­ny Depp re-unites with Tim Bur­ton for faith­ful adap­ta­tion of Stephen Sondheim’s acclaimed musi­cal Sweeney Todd: The Demon Bar­ber of Fleet Street. Depp is in his finest form (despite not hav­ing a Broad­way-strength voice) and is joined by a won­der­ful cast includ­ing Hele­na Bon­ham Carter, Alan Rick­man, Tim­o­thy Spall and Sacha Baron Cohen. Read­ings, Empire, Sky City Quensgate.

“The West Wing” cre­ator Aaron Sorkin returns to DC to script Char­lie Wilson’s War: the true sto­ry of a rene­gade but prin­ci­pled play­boy Con­gress­man (Tom Han­ks) who almost sin­gle-hand­ed­ly fund­ed the Afghan resis­tance to the Sovi­et inva­sion in the 1980s. I was sur­prised to see this wasn’t nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar in the Best Adapt­ed Screen­play cat­e­go­ry but Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man is in there as Sup­port­ing Actor for his excel­lent turn as impolitic CIA oper­a­tive Gust Avrako­tos. You can see this one at the Embassy, Read­ings and Sky City Queens­gate.

[The rest of this week’s new release sum­marised after the jump…]

After a few weeks off list­ing new releas­es I’m return­ing to record a typ­i­cal­ly eccen­tric mix of block­buster and art-house for you to while away those long, balmy sum­mer evenings.

First up is Oscar-win­ner Ang Lee’s first film since Broke­back Moun­tain, an erot­ic espi­onage thriller set in wartime Shang­hai. Already nom­i­nat­ed in last week’s Gold­en Globes Lust, Cau­tion is a Para­mount exclu­sive.

New York gets yet anoth­er ter­ri­ble pound­ing in Clover­field, as a mon­ster of some descrip­tion rips the head off the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty among oth­er atroc­i­ties. The catch here is that the entire tale is told by “ordinary peo­ple” with their cam­corders, a lit­tle like Blair Witch a few years ago. It’s pro­duced by J. J. Abrams (“Lost”) and direct­ed by anoth­er t.v. alum­ni Matt Reeves (best known thus far as cre­ator of “Felicity”). At Read­ings Courte­nay Cen­tral and Sky City Queens­gate.

Patrick Melton and Mar­cus Dun­stan have been up nights devis­ing yet more sadis­tic tor­tures for deserv­ing and unde­serv­ing suck­ers and have come up with Saw IV. Jig­saw carked it at the end of Saw III but that doesn‘t appear to slow things down at all. You’ll find it at Read­ings, Sky City Queens­gate and Regent-on-Man­ners: look for the teenage boys try­ing to sneak in on bor­rowed ID’s.

Bond vil­lain Mads Mikkelsen cross­es over to the side of the angels in Susanne Bier’s acclaimed After the Wed­ding (Para­mount and Pent­house). He plays Jacob, an aid work­er who returns to Den­mark on a fund-rais­ing mis­sion but instead dis­cov­ers a life-chang­ing fam­i­ly secret. After the Wed­ding was nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar last year in the Best For­eign Lan­guage Flick cat­e­go­ry. Final­ly, a geri­atric romance is on offer in Elsa and Fred, from Spain. Described by one crit­ic as “simultaneously heart­break­ing and heart­en­ing” this one seems tai­lor-made for the Pent­house.

Read­ings, in their wis­dom, have decid­ed not to offer the Cap­i­tal Times any reviewer’s pass­es in 2008 which makes writ­ing about their films very close to being more trou­ble than it’s worth. So, Clover­field and Saw IV may not be reviewed there (and thus also at Funer­als & Snakes) next Wednes­day but the oth­ers will.