In theaters

SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET, directed by Tim Burton, written by John Logan, 117 minutes, rated R.

The new Tim Burton movie, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” is bloody, yes – and it’s also bloody excellent.

Screenwriter John Logan based the film on Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s long-running musical, and what he and Burton have created is one of the year’s best movies, a dark, violent musical that thrums with menace, mischief and malice.

This highly stylized, great-looking film finds cinematographer Dariusz Volski draining it of so much color the characters and sets take on the hues of a corpse.

Throughout, the screen looks almost refrigerated – you’d swear that if you touched it, you’d be bitten by cold. Increasingly, things heat up with flashes of red, but that’s only when someone’s throat is slit and gruesome, gushing ribbons of crimson spray forth to warm up the screen.

Decked out in a blowout fright wig that challenges anything he wore in Burton’s “Edward Scissorhands” is Johnny Depp in the title role.

Here, taking another risk in a career built on taking risks, Depp gives a meaty performance (sorry) as Todd, the gifted 19th century barber who knows his way around a close shave and who begins the movie armed with revenge.

Early on, we’re offered a glimpse into Todd’s past, when he was named Benjamin Barker and was a happy family man with a beautiful wife and baby daughter. Each was undone by the evil Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman, wonderful as usual), a greasy snob who wanted Barker’s wife for himself and who set about getting her by devising a plan that sent Barker to prison.

Fifteen years later, Barker has escaped, assumed the name Sweeney Todd, and is stealing back into London, where he meets the not-so-lovely Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), a glowering frump of a woman famous for making some rather shoddy meat pies. She knows it, too – not that she cares. She also knows who Todd really is, which complicates their relationship nicely as she reintroduces Sweeney to his gleaming set of razor blades, all hidden in his old barbershop above her pie shop, and makes a pact with him that is mutually beneficial.

Mrs. Lovett will keep her mouth shut and allow Todd his revenge on the hateful Turpin (and eventually all of London when his first attempt at killing Turpin goes wrong), so long as he provides her with a steady supply of meat for her increasingly popular pies. Since Todd has gone mad, let the slicing and dicing begin.

Not to mention the singing, which is very good, as is the energy that comes from the film’s darkly funny musical numbers. Supporting turns from Timothy Spall as the grotesque Beadle Bamford, Sacha Baron Cohen as the mincing Italian barber Pirelli, and Jayne Wisener as Todd’s daughter, Johanna, are excellent. Same goes for Jamie Campbell Bower as Anthony, the young sailor working to save Johanna from her unfortunate fate with Turpin.

But the movie’s real magic is sparked by Depp and Carter, who seem to share the same lost, twisted soul. They are so good together, so bruised, each seamlessly blending into the moldy damp of Burton’s old world, that in this movie, they make a compelling argument for ditching the standard holiday fare of fruitcakes in favor of enjoying Mrs. Lovett’s meat pies, regardless of all the sins ground within.

Grade: A

On DVD, HD DVD

EASTERN PROMISES, directed by David Cronenberg, written by Steve Knight, 96 minutes, rated R.

David Cronenberg’s “Eastern Promises” is a movie thoroughly arranged to engage, shake and provoke. Steve Knight wrote the script, which sets the story in the dreariest version of present-day London audiences have seen since, say, “Dirty Pretty Things,” which Knight also wrote.

He shouldn’t expect the key to the city anytime soon. Like that movie, “Promises” exposes London’s uglier corners in ways that that city might sooner want you to forget.

The film explores the Russian mafia’s stronghold over London, with Viggo Mortensen pitch-perfect as Nikolai, a driver of few words (“I drive car”) whose employer is a powerful, corrupt family led by the coolly evil Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl).

Typical of a mob story, Semyon is a hive of complexities (more Brando, less Gandolfini), perhaps more proud of his borscht than he is of his son, Kirill (Vincent Cassel), a screw-up of the first order whom Semyon is working to contain.

But when a nurse named Anna (Naomi Watts) comes into their lives with the diary of a dead Russian girl whose life ended while giving birth, Semyon’s focus wavers. Now he must keep not only his unstable son in line, but also Anna, who has no idea that the contents of that diary, written in Russian, can implicate Semyon and his family in ways that would bring them down.

Who does Semyon turn to for help? Naturally, solid, dependable Nikolai. Trouble is, solid, dependable Nikolai secretly is attracted to Anna in ways that deepen the movie with satisfying twists.

Filled with scenes of note – the most talked about being Mortensen fighting nude in an extended, expertly handled Turkish bathhouse scene – “Eastern Promises” is a fresh blast of toxic air that lingers. It’s a movie about good and evil first, violence second, and while it might seem while watching the movie that I have that backward, it isn’t the slitting of throats you consider after walking away from the film (as you do in “Sweeney Todd”), but those who chose a life of violence, those who chose to resist it, and the vague reasons.

Grade: A-

Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear Mondays, Fridays and weekends in Lifestyle, as well as on bangordailynews.com. He may be reached at Christopher@week

inrewind.com.