Martin Scorsese puts Leonardo DiCaprio through the wringer again in Shutter Island, a gothic adaptation of Dennis Lehane's novel. Leo's character, a Federal Marshal named Teddy Daniels, is first seen vomiting and jittery aboard a ferry; he and his new partner (Mark Ruffalo) are being taken across the water to investigate an escape from a prison for the criminally insane, located on a forbidding rock called Shutter Island.

From the first, Scorsese treats the place as though it were Skull Island in King Kong, worthy of ominous music cues and portentous camera angles. This might not be an easy assignment for the sweaty, anxious Daniels, who is haunted by his memories of German concentration camps and the loss of his wife (Michelle Williams, appearing in ghostly hallucinations).

The audience will likely feel just as unnerved as Daniels, given the destabilizing nature of Robert Richardson's swooping cinematography and Thelma Schoonmaker's crazy-making editing scheme (it feels as though fractions of seconds have been removed from the timing of simple conversations, giving the movie a strung-out edginess--it's like watching Ray Liotta's cocaine meltdown sequence from GoodFellas for 138 minutes).

Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow are staff psychiatrists, suspiciously eager to talk about lobotomies, and Ted Levine and Patricia Clarkson appear for small but potent turns. Scorsese appears to be "doing a genre picture" here, borrowing happily from influences such as Val Lewton and Samuel Fuller, and the film has a resultingly put-on atmosphere: a great deal of old-dark-house Sturm und Drang whipped up in service of a gimmicky little premise. The fade-out achieves some measure of real eeriness, and the whole shebang is certainly a kicky night out at the movies--if you can shake the sense that a talented filmmaker is working a couple of rungs beneath his level. --Robert Horton

Dark and moody, the film is a thrilling ride back to the turn of the 19th century. Johnny Depp stars as Ichabod Crane, a seemingly hapless constable from New York City who is sent to the small town of Sleepy Hollow to solve the mystery of the decapitations that are plaguing the town. Crane is a bumbling sort, with a tremendous faith in science over mysticism, and he comes up against town secrets, bewitching women, and a number of bodies missing heads. Christina Ricci, as beautiful as ever, is Katrina Van Tassel, the offbeat love interest who alternately charms and frightens Crane.

The film, while occasionally gory (as one should expect from a movie about a headless horseman), is not terribly frightening, although it is suspenseful. Both Depp and Ricci are convincing, and the art direction and production values give the village its harsh feel. Toward the end, once the secrets are revealed, the film does slow down; however, this stylistic horror film provides many tricks and even more treats. --Jenny Brown

The show's mix of gothic horror, Grand Guignol, very dark humor, and witty and beautiful music never was the stuff of traditional musical comedy, but it's a powerful work, and perhaps the richest of the late 20th century. In the movie, Burton's frequent collaborator, Johnny Depp, plays Todd, a wronged man whose lust for revenge drives him to murder (an 19th-century legend who has been traced to a real-life barber).

Helena Bonham Carter, another Burton mainstay, is Mrs. Lovett, the barber's partner-in-unspeakable-crime. It's no surprise that Depp is an excellent choice to convey Todd's brooding intensity and volcanic rage, but he can also sing a score that is so challenging it has often played in opera houses (though not with the same style as the Broadway original, Len Cariou, and he occasionally lapses into pop style).

Bonham Carter is small of voice and lacks the humor of the original Broadway Lovett, Angela Lansbury, but she sings on pitch, in rhythm, and in character at the same time, which is no small feat for a Sondheim show. Aficionados will regret the loss of certain musical passages--"The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" is just an instrumental overture and the chorus is gone altogether, among others--but the reassuring presence of orchestrator Jonathan Tunick and conductor Paul Gemignani ensures that the music feels right and sounds great. And the film's depiction of a Victorian London hellhole--with cinematography by Dariusz Wolski and costumes by Colleen Atwood--also looks and feels right.

The excellent cast is filled out by Alan Rickman as the villainous Judge Turpin, Timothy Spall as his seedy Beadle, Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat) as a rival barber, Jamie Campbell Bower as the young lover Anthony, Jayne Wisener as his object of affection, and Ed Sanders as the young Toby. For fans of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp who don't think they like musicals, Sweeney Todd should be a revelation (though not for the squeamish, as the gore is intense and completely appropriate).

For fans of Broadway and Sondheim, it's hard to imagine getting a better adaptation than this. The fact that there's no newly composed Oscar-bait song sung by a Josh Groban-type over the end credits only makes it better. --David Horiuchi
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"><tr><td><img src="http://dvdsonsale.net/images/B0013D8LOK/51u7CpZ1kuL._SL75_.jpg" /><td></tr><tr><td>After years of rumors, it turns out that Tim Burton was the perfect visionary to film Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Stephen Sondheim's Broadway masterpiece, and the result is a macabre and moving musical movie as enthralling as anything Burton has ever done. The show's mix of gothic horror, Grand Guignol, very dark humor, and witty and beautiful music never was the stuff of traditional musical comedy, but it's a powerful work, and perhaps the richest of the late 20th century. In the movie, Burton's frequent collaborator, Johnny Depp, plays Todd, a wronged man whose lust for revenge drives him to murder (an 19th-century legend who has been traced to a real-life barber). Helena Bonham Carter, another Burton mainstay, is Mrs. Lovett, the barber's partner-in-unspeakable-crime. It's no surprise that Depp is an excellent choice to convey Todd's brooding intensity and volcanic rage, but he can also sing a score that is so challenging it has often played in opera houses (though not with the same style as the Broadway original, Len Cariou, and he occasionally lapses into pop style). Bonham Carter is small of voice and lacks the humor of the original Broadway Lovett, Angela Lansbury, but she sings on pitch, in rhythm, and in character at the same time, which is no small feat for a Sondheim show. Aficionados will regret the loss of certain musical passages--"The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" is just an instrumental overture and the chorus is gone altogether, among others--but the reassuring presence of orchestrator Jonathan Tunick and conductor Paul Gemignani ensures that the music feels right and sounds great. And the film's depiction of a Victorian London hellhole--with cinematography by Dariusz Wolski and costumes by Colleen Atwood--also looks and feels right. The excellent cast is filled out by Alan Rickman as the villainous Judge Turpin, Timothy Spall as his seedy Beadle, Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat) as a rival barber, Jamie Campbell Bower as the young lover Anthony, Jayne Wisener as his object of affection, and Ed Sanders as the young Toby. For fans of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp who don't think they like musicals, Sweeney Todd should be a revelation (though not for the squeamish, as the gore is intense and completely appropriate). For fans of Broadway and Sondheim, it's hard to imagine getting a better adaptation than this. The fact that there's no newly composed Oscar-bait song sung by a Josh Groban-type over the end credits only makes it better. --David Horiuchi<td></tr></table>

Johnny Depp gets high off another acting challenge in this tricky adaptation of a Stephen King yarn. Although the mood is too sinister to allow for the mischief of his Pirates of the Caribbean turn, Depp still manages to embroider his role here with plenty of quirky business. He plays a writer, depressed and nearly divorced, who's stuck in an isolated cabin (shades of The Shining) when a stranger (John Turturro) arrives, accusing him of plagiarism.

Writer-director David Koepp (Stir of Echoes) does his best to make the rickety material compelling--he gets the maximum out of the cabin set, for instance--but the problems inherent in the King story eventually win out. The climactic scenes are particularly unpleasant, especially in contrast to the cleverness of Depp's performance. A Philip Glass score adds class, but this one ultimately feels like a disappointment. --Robert Horton

This is where the careful hero of Zombieland, a kid nicknamed Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), finds himself early in the film, and you can hardly blame him for hitching a ride with this swaggering Alpha Male. Still, they have their hands full not only with gibbering zombies but also with two sisters (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin) who will stop at nothing to reach a Disneyland-like amusement park in L.A.

Although Zombieland gets off to a rocky start with Columbus's overly-cute narration (he's got a list of rules for surviving in the zombie world), it settles into an amusing comedy, regularly interrupted by bouts of blood-letting. The road-trip stuff is enough fun that when the movie does arrive at its version of Disneyland, the air goes out of it a little; sure, there's a giant zombie blowout, with entrails flying, but it's not quite the same.

Director Ruben Fleischer keeps the gags coming, although the movie is often funnier in its odd little asides (both Eisenberg and Harrelson are expert at this) than in its official jokes. Comic high point: an interlude at the home of a very famous movie star, who plays himself--and we'll leave the spoiler unspoiled, in case anybody hasn't heard about this funny extended cameo. --Robert Horton
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"><tr><td><img src="http://dvdsonsale.net/images/B002WY65VU/51Mmdh1Ud8L._SL75_.jpg" /><td></tr><tr><td>If there's been a zombie apocalypse and you're road-tripping alone though the wasteland, you could do worse than run into Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), a bourbon-swilling bad-boy butt-kicker with a really cool car. This is where the careful hero of Zombieland, a kid nicknamed Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), finds himself early in the film, and you can hardly blame him for hitching a ride with this swaggering Alpha Male. Still, they have their hands full not only with gibbering zombies but also with two sisters (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin) who will stop at nothing to reach a Disneyland-like amusement park in L.A. Although Zombieland gets off to a rocky start with Columbus's overly-cute narration (he's got a list of rules for surviving in the zombie world), it settles into an amusing comedy, regularly interrupted by bouts of blood-letting. The road-trip stuff is enough fun that when the movie does arrive at its version of Disneyland, the air goes out of it a little; sure, there's a giant zombie blowout, with entrails flying, but it's not quite the same. Director Ruben Fleischer keeps the gags coming, although the movie is often funnier in its odd little asides (both Eisenberg and Harrelson are expert at this) than in its official jokes. Comic high point: an interlude at the home of a very famous movie star, who plays himself--and we'll leave the spoiler unspoiled, in case anybody hasn't heard about this funny extended cameo. --Robert Horton<td></tr></table>

And what's this have to do with the prologue about a Soviet fighter jet crashing some decades earlier? Whiteout, based on the graphic novel by Greg Rucka, solves these questions in a brisk if mostly preposterous manner, and it moves swiftly enough so you don't have to spend too much time on the plausibility of it all.

Among the other snowbound stragglers are a U.N. investigator (Gabriel Macht, of The Spirit), some cocky pilots (Alex O'Laughlin, Columbus Short), and a grizzled doctor (Tom Skerritt). If the presence of Skerritt conjures up memories of Alien, with its ten-little-Indians structure and female warrior, hold on--Whiteout doesn't actually have a supernatural twist to it, and Beckinsale is no Sigourney Weaver.

But director Dominic Sena (undistinguished by his cheesy film Swordfish) puts the screws to the material in a relentless way, and the vast exteriors (shot in Canada) are impressive. And when it comes to one particular wow-you're-really-going-there instance of potential amputation for a main character, the film doesn't back down. In fact it sort of revels in the moment. --Robert Horton
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"><tr><td><img src="http://dvdsonsale.net/images/B001QOGYFO/517AnBMrL6L._SL75_.jpg" /><td></tr><tr><td>Baby, it's cold outside: that's the problem for U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale), the only law-enforcement officer assigned to Antarctica. On the verge of shipping out before the really bad weather hits, Carrie is confronted with a mysterious murder that sounds like a riddle: how'd a lone corpse find its way to the middle of an ice field, as though dropped from a great height? And what's this have to do with the prologue about a Soviet fighter jet crashing some decades earlier? Whiteout, based on the graphic novel by Greg Rucka, solves these questions in a brisk if mostly preposterous manner, and it moves swiftly enough so you don't have to spend too much time on the plausibility of it all. Among the other snowbound stragglers are a U.N. investigator (Gabriel Macht, of The Spirit), some cocky pilots (Alex O'Laughlin, Columbus Short), and a grizzled doctor (Tom Skerritt). If the presence of Skerritt conjures up memories of Alien, with its ten-little-Indians structure and female warrior, hold on--Whiteout doesn't actually have a supernatural twist to it, and Beckinsale is no Sigourney Weaver. But director Dominic Sena (undistinguished by his cheesy film Swordfish) puts the screws to the material in a relentless way, and the vast exteriors (shot in Canada) are impressive. And when it comes to one particular wow-you're-really-going-there instance of potential amputation for a main character, the film doesn't back down. In fact it sort of revels in the moment. --Robert Horton<td></tr></table>

Ben Foster and Dennis Quaid--two consistently watchable actors, and both well used here--are top-billed as a pair of space travelers who awake from lengthy hibernation with no idea who they are or how they got aboard a vast and seemingly empty spacecraft. Their exploration of the ship uncovers not only a handful of fellow humans, among them martial arts champ Cung Le and French scientist/requisite eye candy Antje Traue, but a host of feral mutants with unpleasant designs on them.

Director Christian Alvert, who gained international acclaim among genre viewers with his thriller Antibodies, keeps viewers engaged and unsettled with shadow-steeped cinematography and elaborately creepy production design, though his own attention span, which can be charitably described as blink and you'll miss it, obscures the clashes between the human and monster cast.

However, Alvert has a few twists up his sleeve for the finale--one inspired, the other, less so--which not only helps to smooth over any of Pandorum's rougher edges, but also indicates that he's a genre director to watch. --Paul Gaita
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"><tr><td><img src="http://dvdsonsale.net/images/B002QW7ALM/51pj22QfRrL._SL75_.jpg" /><td></tr><tr><td>Largely dismissed as yet another Alien carbon, the science-fiction/horror hybrid Pandorum exceeds the limits of that critique with an agreeable mix of atmospherics and high-voltage scares. Ben Foster and Dennis Quaid--two consistently watchable actors, and both well used here--are top-billed as a pair of space travelers who awake from lengthy hibernation with no idea who they are or how they got aboard a vast and seemingly empty spacecraft. Their exploration of the ship uncovers not only a handful of fellow humans, among them martial arts champ Cung Le and French scientist/requisite eye candy Antje Traue, but a host of feral mutants with unpleasant designs on them. Director Christian Alvert, who gained international acclaim among genre viewers with his thriller Antibodies, keeps viewers engaged and unsettled with shadow-steeped cinematography and elaborately creepy production design, though his own attention span, which can be charitably described as blink and you'll miss it, obscures the clashes between the human and monster cast. However, Alvert has a few twists up his sleeve for the finale--one inspired, the other, less so--which not only helps to smooth over any of Pandorum's rougher edges, but also indicates that he's a genre director to watch. --Paul Gaita<td></tr></table>

This is a bit different from your typical teen slasher or horror movie however. You'll see some dark comedy and some humor. You'll see a different kind of horror story, and there will be plenty of thrills and scares along the way. And as you have probably already heard, there is a very sexual scene between Megan Fox and her co-starlet Amanda Seyfried.

This movie will be better than most people thought it would be, and you can pick it up as a fun movie to watch over the weekend with your friends. Whether you are a fan of horror movies, Megan Fox movies in general or just want something a little edgy and bit different to watch, then you should buy our own discount copy of Jennifer's Body on DVD right here.

Though one might assume that the point-of-view aesthetic had been worn out thanks to Cloverfield and Quarantine (and, lest one forgets, Blair Witch), Paranormal makes excellent use of the single-camera technique, which helps to not only preserve the film's central conceit--a new-minted couple records the increasingly threatening supernatural phenomena that have invaded their home on a camcorder--but underscore the realism needed to drive home the low-fi (if completely persuasive) special effects.

The approach is also crucial to the film's suspense, which unfolds in long, largely broken takes to nerve-rattling effect. Not every horror fan--or moviegoer--will fall for the film's spook-show approach. Those that found Blair Witch's less-is-more approach aggravating will feel the same way about Paranormal, but the sleight of hand exhibited by first-time director Oren Peli, and assisted by his two leads, relative newcomers Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat, should provide adventurous viewers with fresher and stronger scares than anything from Hollywood in recent years. --Paul Gaita
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"><tr><td><img src="http://dvdsonsale.net/images/B002VKE1K2/51xTcpHzVbL._SL75_.jpg" /><td></tr><tr><td>Like The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity is an impressive and harrowing indie chiller that derives much of its terror--and there is quite a bit of that in its brief running time--by playing on the most basic of human fears: that which cannot be seen. Though one might assume that the point-of-view aesthetic had been worn out thanks to Cloverfield and Quarantine (and, lest one forgets, Blair Witch), Paranormal makes excellent use of the single-camera technique, which helps to not only preserve the film's central conceit--a new-minted couple records the increasingly threatening supernatural phenomena that have invaded their home on a camcorder--but underscore the realism needed to drive home the low-fi (if completely persuasive) special effects. The approach is also crucial to the film's suspense, which unfolds in long, largely broken takes to nerve-rattling effect. Not every horror fan--or moviegoer--will fall for the film's spook-show approach. Those that found Blair Witch's less-is-more approach aggravating will feel the same way about Paranormal, but the sleight of hand exhibited by first-time director Oren Peli, and assisted by his two leads, relative newcomers Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat, should provide adventurous viewers with fresher and stronger scares than anything from Hollywood in recent years. --Paul Gaita<td></tr></table>

When it was announced that Tom Cruise would play the vampire Lestat in this adaptation of Anne Rice's bestselling novel, even Rice chimed in with a highly publicized objection. The author wisely and justifiably recanted her negative opinion when she saw Cruise's excellent performance, which perceptively addresses the pain and chronic melancholy that plagues anyone cursed with immortal bloodlust.

Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dunst are equally good at maintaining the dark and brooding tone of Rice's novel. And in this rare mainstream project for a major studio, director Neil Jordan compensates for a lumbering plot by honoring the literate, Romantic qualities of Rice's screenplay. Considered a disappointment while being embraced by Rice's loyal followers, the movie is too slow to be a satisfying thriller, but it is definitely one of the most lavish, intelligent horror films ever made. --Jeff Shannon
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"><tr><td><img src="http://dvdsonsale.net/images/B001AQR3E4/51Iq20M7vRL._SL75_.jpg" /><td></tr><tr><td>When it was announced that Tom Cruise would play the vampire Lestat in this adaptation of Anne Rice's bestselling novel, even Rice chimed in with a highly publicized objection. The author wisely and justifiably recanted her negative opinion when she saw Cruise's excellent performance, which perceptively addresses the pain and chronic melancholy that plagues anyone cursed with immortal bloodlust. Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dunst are equally good at maintaining the dark and brooding tone of Rice's novel. And in this rare mainstream project for a major studio, director Neil Jordan compensates for a lumbering plot by honoring the literate, Romantic qualities of Rice's screenplay. Considered a disappointment while being embraced by Rice's loyal followers, the movie is too slow to be a satisfying thriller, but it is definitely one of the most lavish, intelligent horror films ever made. --Jeff Shannon<td></tr></table>