Throne of Blood
The Scottish Play goes to Japan in this reimagining of Macbeth from Akira Kurosawa. Is that a samurai sword I see before me? Toshiro Mifune gives an intense lead performance […]
Tag Archives: shakespeare
Hamlet (1990)
Mel Gibson goes mad in this cinematic version of perhaps the most quoted and adapted of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Where films like The Banquet and The Bad Sleep Well took Hamlet into […]
National Theatre Live: Twelfth Night
On the twelfth night of lockdown the NT gave to me… a screening of Twelfth Night for freeee. Currently available for free on YouTube, Shakespeare’s gender-bending romcom is well-suited to […]
Jazz Odyssey: All Night Long
Welcome to Jazz Odyssey, a week of jazz-related film reviews because this blog isn’t nearly alienating enough as it is. No spoilers but these include a thriller, a documentary, a […]
The Bad Sleep Well
The Bad Sleep Well (tell that to Margaret Thatcher) is Akira Kurosawa’s cross between Hamlet and American Psycho. Hip to be square or hip not to be square? That is the […]
All is True
This is the a film about the later years of Shakespeare’s (Kenneth Branagh) life as he deals with the twin tragedies of the death of his son, Hamnet, and the […]
The Banquet
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is transported back 2,000 years to the opulent surroundings of ancient China, where trouble is brewing in the imperial court. The Crown Prince Wuluan (Daniel Wu) is in […]
The Handmaiden
From Park Chan-wook, the South Korean mastermind behind Oldboy and Stoker, comes the best film about a handmaiden since The Phantom Menace. Ostensibly the story of a pickpocket (Kim Tae-ri) […]
West Side Story
Two basketball teams, both alike in dignity / in fair Manhattan, where we lay our scene. So doesn’t begin Sondheim and Bernstein’s West Side Story. Set in New York City, 1957, this […]
Macbeth
Michael Fassbender plays the titular character – a Scottish Thain with cut-throat ambitions and a murderous instinct. When some strange women prophesise that he will one day be King of Scotland […]
Screen Goblin 