hey, let's go to a movie

Time was, movies were a great escape. Comedies, musicals, the cowboy who always got the girl at the end, car chases in which only the bad guys crashed and burned, or the occasional James Bond spy thriller were just what you needed to disappear for a few hours and re-emerge with a lighter step.

In the last two days we've seen "Atonement," which left me depressed after the surprise ending caught me totally off guard, and "Sweeney Todd," which left my skin crawling.

"Sweeney Todd" is a dark 19th-century edition of "Devil in the White City" meets "Soylent Green" in London, with the main character played by Jack the Ripper, and with all the brightness and cheer of "Phantom of the Opera."

There is no disputing that Johnny Depp is a fine actor, and he should win an award for this one. In his next movie he should portray Vlad the Impaler, or maybe the Vampire LeStat.

I can't believe they released "Sweeney Todd" four days before Christmas. It would have been a good Halloween movie, but I agree with Garrison Keillor's comment that it was a long two hours and you get tired of the color gray after awhile. For him, the high point was after the movie when a tall woman (he could tell, by the size of her feet) wearing a long black coat emerged from a stall in the men's room and walked purposefully out. His column became a plug for correcting the inequities in men's and women's public bathrooms (the latter always being too small) and a plea for architects to forget their love of symmetry, go back to the drawing boards, and do the right thing for women. Otherwise, he predicts, the line between men's and women's bathrooms will be erased and men will have lost the last male preserve. Speaking as a guy who has stood lookout while my favorite lady avoided the ridiculously long line to the women's bathroom, I agree wholeheartedly.

But, back to the movies. I need a good escape, something along the lines of "Run Silent, Run Deep," in which Clark Gable teaches the crew how to take out an enemy tanker, then take out the approaching destroyer with a bow shot followed by a rapid descent ("DIVE, DIVE"). Now, that's my idea of great escape. Literally.