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.