William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1996) REVISIT

Full disclosure; director Luhrmann's Red Carpet Trilogy (this, along with Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge!) are some of my favourite films ever. While there are Shakespeare plays closer to my heart, I admit, Romeo and Juliet, as the first I was ever exposed to, and for its reckless romanticism, remains one I enjoy time after time. So this pairing is pretty much perfect for me. Luhrmann's operatic, otherworldly style merges both the modern sensibility with the elevated language, to create a fantasy of tragic love. 

Luhrmann's approach in these films is to start out at full speed, careening us into his mad worlds, and just as we are overwhelmed by the spectacle, he finds a softness, he slows us down, and then overwhelms us with the emotion and passion on top of it all. Here it is that the chaos of his neon visions until his two lovers meet and we, like them, are swept up in love. Des'ree's Kissing You grabs our hearts and it all feels just like a dream of love.

 

His visual style, here crafting a wholly realized Verona Beach, where this magical tale can exist seamlessly in a modern world of gangs and drugs. His adaptation perfectly finds late 20th century reasons for everything, whether it be Queen Mab as a drug trip, or gun fights exchanged for swords, or a courier company called "post haste." He inserts an overt queerness into the narrative. He makes the inevitable tragedy feel both appropriate and entirely heartbreaking. In short his fantastic approach makes the story all the more honest and heartfelt.

DiCaprio was just beginning his meteoric rise to superstardom with this film and yet he proves he's first and foremost a remarkable actor. His Romeo is a tortured teen, angered and frustrated by the conflict he's born into. He makes us understand why Juliet is so captivating. She is his way out of of it. And he for her. While it is easy for us to critique the childish love this play's leads fall into, DiCaprio and Danes infuse it with something far more, making it feel oh so more real, despite the fantastic world they inhabit. Danes, also at the beginning of her career, is probably the best Juliet I've ever seen, one that has far more agency than she often enjoys. Also wonderful are Parrineau and Leguizamo whose Mercutio and Tybalt both bring gravitas to the story, and a sense of danger, a feeling there is more to this story than just the lovers.

This film is unforgettable, whether for how striking it is visually or because of the quiet moments between DiCaprio and Danes. Gorgeous throughout, the film is endlessly watchable. But it is also filmed in a way that makes it completely accessible. Despite using the original text (admittedly with additions from other plays) the dialogue is easily digestible. It is also creative in how it uses that text. He inverts our expectations, no small matter for a 500 year old play, for example by not setting the balcony scene on a balcony.

What it comes down to is I never tire of watching this film. I watch it each time like a rich treat that makes me smile and cry. It makes me care about young foolish love. And it makes me love movies and all they can do. And it makes me love the Bard's beautiful tale of love and waste.

William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes, John Leguizamo, Harold Parrineau, Pete Postlethwaite, Paul Rudd, Paul Sorvino, Brian Dennehy, Miriam Margolyes, Diane Venora, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Jesse Bradford, Dash Mihok, Jamie Kennedy, Christina Pickles

Director: Baz Luhrmann

Writers: William Shakespeare, Craig Pearce, Baz Luhrmann

 

Superintelligence (2020)

Sure the premise and plot of Superintelligence is rather silly and sleight, but damn it if you won't laugh and smile all the way through.  The film is filled with truly funny people, with the always enjoyable McCarthy at the centre, and so despite any script failures the film is just damn hilarious. 

This is the sort of film you don't want to think very hard about. Once you go down the rabbit hole of just how much an AI would behave the way the one does in this film, how the plot it creates and the reactionary plot the world's governments create to counter act it would NOT work, you end up just wasting your time. Let it go and just use this as an excuse to watch McCarthy and some extremely funny people (I'm looking at you Brian Tyree Henry) riff off each other.

McCarthy is truly talented and as much as she can hit it out of the park, she can also strike out. This is neither. It's a bunt that gets her to first base. And it's an enjoyable 106 minutes. It doesn't reach the heights of Spy or Bridesmaids, doesn't give her the showcase of a Can You Ever Forgive Me?, but it's way more fun than that some of her stinkers.

Superintelligence

Starring: Melissa McCarthy, James Corden, Octavia Spencer, Bobby Canavale, Brian Tyree Henry, Jean Smart, Sam Richardson Ben Falcone

Director: Ben Falcone

Writer: Steve Mallory

 

Hillbilly Elegy (2020)

Hillbilly Elegy really isn't very good but within this rather paint by numbers adaptation there are two performances that rise above the material and make it not a total disaster.  Sure it's an overly simplistic character study that reduces it's subjects to cliches and is shot in a TV movie of the week style. It attempts to deal with some seriously dark abuse and mental health issues yet glosses over them rather plainly, which often feels irresponsible. And maybe the worst part is it is also rather bland, at times boring. Still casting Adams and Close saves it just enough that I don't regret watching it.

 

Amy Adams is the main strength of the film, proving she can be good in pretty much anything. The script makes her character two dimensional but she rises far above the material, embedding in the performance some moments of clarity that spark some empathy. This is a role that is quite different from anything else she's done yet she disappears right into it and becomes what she needs to to make it work. Glenn Close is good too, again in a role that doesn't give her much, she finds a way to make it feel honest. 

I wish this film had found a way to get beyond stereotypes and explore social structures and cultural influences of its subjects in ways that might be insightful. I wish the film had told a more engaging story, one that made me care about the characters, made me want so learn more about them. I wish the film had found a way to explore the violence, abuse, and illness realistically. It doesn't and it likely won't resonate for much of its audience. It actually insults its viewers by talking down to them and treating the themes of the story so predictably. We should expect more and Elegy just doesn't live up to it. But at least it gives us two preferences from actors who are always worth watching.

Hillbilly Elegy

Starring: Amy Adams, Glenn Close, Gabriel Basso, Haley Bennett, Frieda Pinto, Bo Hopkins

Director: Ron Howard

Writer: Vanessa Taylor

 

As You Like It (2006) REWATCH

As You Like It is in many ways the quintessential Shakespearean romance with it's troubled society banishing young lovers who escape to the forest, play around with gender roles, and return married and happy and everything is better. It is the exploration of the idea that "love conquers everything" and "all you need is love." While some scholars debate whether it is one of the Bard's best or weaker works, it hasn't been explored in film as much as more popular marriage comedies (Much Ado About Nothing) and the few film versions are not regarded as great either. Kenneth Branagh's last Shakespeare film adaption (so far) is often dismissed as such too but for me it demands some reviewing as it might offer more than one expects. 

Branagh plays with the story quite a bit by setting it in colonial Japan and including a multiracial cast who all do a great job with their roles. But while doing so he stays true to the story's heart, a determined insistence in the power of love to overcome the worst. I felt his placing the story in a colonial location, featuring people who perhaps shouldn't be where they are, with the banishment and the romantic transformations, was a fitting and fascinating setting for this story to play out. 

As usual Branagh's penchant for beautiful art direction is abundantly obviously. Both his classic Japanese inspired sets and the forest of Arden itself, are gorgeous and seek to make the story feel lush, fleshing out the romances intertwined in the story. Branagh manages to both challenge certain assumptions, with his interracial casting, and in other ways plays it safe, by downplaying some of the gender role reversals, but the overall effect of the settings gives it the sort of transgressive quality this story needs to hit its notes. 

Overall on rewatching As You Like It, I did like it. It was visually pleasing, comically entertaining, and charmingly romantic. 

As You Like It 

Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard, David Oyelowo, Romola Garai, Kevin Klien, Adrien Lester, Alfred Molina, Brian Blessed, Janet McTeer

Director: Kenneth Branagh

Writers: William Shakespeare, Kenneth Branagh

Ammonite (2020)

While I know many people loved writer/director Francis Lee's first full feature, God's Own Country, I found it rather dull. For me it was slow and bleak. I appreciated her attentiveness to the love between two men making a life together in a time and place where that isn't possible, but I still found it rather passionless, or maybe just too quietly apprehensive to truly inspire passion. Now she has turned her attention to an equally bleak lesbian relationship which in my mind feels about as unambitious in its pursuit of finding the magic in this connection between these women. 

Ammonite focuses on the cold. The atmosphere is chilly, the film spelling that out for us visually and in the dialogue, but mostly in the interactions between Winslet's misanthrope and Ronan's waif. Lee's approach is to make them both so remote it's hard for us to see how they come together. I never felt the chemistry between them, never witnessed the spark. Maybe that's okay. Maybe it's not about that. Maybe it's about these women searching for and not truly finding the things missing for them but relying on it anyway. But in that case, the story is even more tragic than it appears. 

But throughout the film kept its audience at arm's length, never truly letting us into whatever its characters are feeling. For me the story never resonated in a way that made it feel real. As I watched Winslet comb another beach and carve away at another stone, I just felt cold and lost.

Ammonite

Starring: Kate Winslet, Saoirse Ronan, Fiona Shaw, Gemma Jones, James McArdle

Writer/Director: Francis Lee

The Life Ahead (2020)

The legendary Sophia Loren returns to cinema with a breathtaking performance as a senior Italian jew who takes in orphans in this touching piece directed by her son, Edoardo Ponti. This is her first significant role since 2009's Nine, and it is a triumphant return to the screen. But she's not alone. Newcomer Ibrahima Gueye is captivating as one of the young boys she looks after, and Abril Zamora is charismatic as a neighbor entangled in their lives. 

The Life Ahead is a lovely story about those rejected making a place for themselves. I love stories of chosen family as the idea of the creation of family by those without is one of my favourite themes. It is explored beautifully here. Ponti is judicious with his story telling, never indulging in anything too saccharine or holding our hands through it. He simply lets his characters exist together, clash, and nurture. It is truly lovely. 

 

The Life Ahead

Starring: Sophia Loren,  Ibrahima Gueye, Abril Zamora

Direct: Edoardo Ponti

Writers: Ugo Chiti, Edoardo Ponti
 

Freaky (2020)

Freaky mashes the Freaky Friday concept (a teen swaps bodies with an adult and they have to live as each other for a period of time) with slasher film conceits. It is, as popularity described, clever and funny, but I’m not sure it really does more than just recycle the slasher cliches by adding the new gimmick. To be fair it is fun but t is still rather predictable and very much exactly what you would expect.

Perhaps the build up to this film made me think it would be a little more subversive, like a modern Scream, attempting to deconstruct the genre a bit. It is definitely not that. It is standard slasher comedy. It is good for what it is, but it never tries to be more. And that is fine as fans of the genre will likely have a good time, well fans who want to get exactly what they would expect. 

Both Vaughn and Newton have fun with their role swapping parts. Vaughn should get credit for avoiding the pitfalls the script throws at him. He’s acting like an 18 year old girl and it would be easy for this to get rather sexist (and honestly homophobic) in the portrayal, especially in an awkward scene where he kisses the 18 year old boyfriend of Newton’s character. But he manages to avoid falling into stereotypes despite how much the script seems to want that

So Freaky is rather light fun even if it ends up being a big forgettable. 

Freaky

Starring: Vince Vaughn, Kathryn Newton, Alan Ruck

Director: Christopher Landon

Writers: Michael Kennedy, Christopher Landon

 

A Rainy Day in New York (2020)

As a young man I loved Woody Allen's films. Smart and funny and inspiring me with ideas I hadn't yet wrestled with, I consumed them religiously. Sure I ignored those that felt rather self-indulgent, more and more of them started to feel that way as I got older, so I focused on the ones I could truly love. But as I learned more and more about him as a person it became harder and harder to enjoy his work, especially as his films became an outlet for him to justify the worst aspects of his character. And along with me much of the world began to catch up and his films started to feel less and less relevant. 

Will A Rainy Day in New York be his last film? Made as his star was falling, filled with a cast of the latest It Players, it got delayed as less and less people were comfortable with him, finally being dumped with a very limited release. Sure there are his defenders, mostly folks who say we should "separate the art from the artist" but as his art has been slipping into something that feels repetitive, that becomes a less convincing argument. Still, in light of all the amazing films I have enjoyed of his, and the fact that he may never get another film released, at least not for a long time, I figured I would give his New York one last visit. 

But this Rainy Day really is all you would expect it to be, a rather tone deaf exploration of young women's attraction to elder artists and odd men's obsessive sexual jealousy. The characters are all anachronistic, fascinated with things that are rather irrelevant to their generation, and desperate to be funny. Yet few of the jokes land or feel fresh. Very little in Rainy Day felt like anything we haven't seen from him before.

And all of this is presented in the gimmick of the titular Rainy Day. The actors spend most of the movie wet and while this works for Chalamet, it actually made me feel cold watching it. The dialogue is overly self-conscious about this, making sure we understand how romantic this gimmick is. However the film never actually gives us romance. None of the connections have that spark, especially not the one that ends the film, which has the least chemistry of the bunch. 

Perhaps the irrelevance of Allen's (possibly) last film is appropriate. A Rainy Day in New York shows him going out with a wet whimper, recycling old ideas and tired jokes, while a bunch of people run around in the rain in New York.

A Rainy Day in New York

Starring: Timothee Chalamet, Elle Fanning, Selena Gomez, Jude Law, Diego Luna, Liev Schreiber, Suki Waterhouse, Rebecca Hall, Cherry Jones, 

Writer/Director: Woody Allen

Kajillionaire (2020)

Kajillionaire, from writer/director Miranda July is as oddball as you would expect if you are familiar with her work. What might be surprising is how sad it is. While on the surface it's funny, with the humour delivered filled with layers by the strong cast, it is the sort of humour that is pregnant with tragedy and pain. Kajillionaire is one of the sadder movies I've seen in a while. 
 

Evan Rachel Wood plays her rather heavily touched character straight, and finds little ways to round her out and give her a depth that is hard to see under her crazy costumes and effected voice. Opposite Deborah Winger and Richard Jenkins who both work similar magic on their characters. 

But it is Gina Rodriguez who stole the movie for me. Her bubbly optimist with a darker side and a sense of kindness that is unexpected is a rich and well played character who is a joy to watch. In fact her story is also sad. 

July crafts one of those stories where you don't know what will happen next and if you try to guess you'll be wrong. The story wouldn't work in the hands of someone less able to bring this sort of madness to life. It all works. And then amongst all the sadness there are these small moments of joy. It is those moments that make this film so engaging. It is like nothing you've seen before and likely won't see again. 

Kajillionaire

Starring: Evan Rachel Wood, Gina Rodriguez, Richard Jenkins, Deborah Winger

Writer/Director: Miranda July

 

The Kid Detective (2020)

Contrary to what the title would suggest, The Kid Detective isn't a kids' movie. It is part hard boiled mystery, part subtle satire, and fully an exploration of the disappointments and illusions of adulthood. Brody, a youth star himself who never materialized into an A-list adult star, captures the lost potential and melancholia of being a grown up. Using the detective genre, specifically the youth detective sub-genre, to explore adult themes of disillusionment. It's a rather clever idea.

First time feature writer.director Morgan crafts a film that is a bit bitter and sarcastic. It explores the darkness of waking up to the horrors of this world. It's full of ironic flourishes but at it's heart it is story about loss and finding meaning. In that there is some hope and poignancy. Morgan doesn't film his movie with much panache, preferring a plainer, almost television-esque style. Perhaps this is inspired by the genre he's playing with. Instead he just lets his story get told. 

The Kid Detective's mystery is interesting enough that it keeps its audience engaged while it gets us to think about Abe's aging plight, his coming to terms with the darkness of the world. It all comes together fairly well, story and moral to the story, to make it an interesting watch.

The Kid Detective

Starring: Adam Brody, Tzi Ma, Sophie Nelisse, Wendy Crewson, Jonathan Whittaker, Jesse Noah Gruman

Writer/Director: Even Morgan

 

Let Him Go (2020)

Writer/director Bezucha's neo-western thriller is being sold as a bloody revenge tale but it's really more of an intense deconstruction of family and gender roles in traditional America. With subtle and not so subtle nods to the holes in the glamorized American mid-20th century idealism (from domestic abuse, to the cultural genocide of Native Americans, to corruption in law enforcement) Let Him Go is a fascinating character study and intensely riveting. 

The film truly is centered on Diane Lane's character. She is the heart of the film, moving forward the action and providing the strength of the story. She is outstanding in this role, a role that demands her to be so many things all at once, and she is breathtaking. Also wonderful is Lesley Manville as her opposite. The men in the film are rather sidelined to tell this story, this female centered story.

The film is told patiently and quietly with simmering tensions just under the surface, bubbling up in a few moments that are gut wrenching. Bezucha's restraint keeps the story elevated, allowing the most intense moments all the more powerful, and real. While I felt the ending rushed things a bit, the film otherwise is very well paced.

Let Him Go grabs you tells you a powerful story that is gripping. It is also emotionally resonate, so much so that you'll hold your breath watching this film and only let it go once you feel comfortable breathing again. I've always enjoyed Lane and it's great to see her in such a wonderful role, in such a well made film. 

Let Him Go

Starring: Diane Lane, Kevin Costner, Lesley Manville, Jeffrey Donovan

Writer/Director: Thomas Bazucha

The Hollow Crown (2012 - 2016) REVISIT

The BBC produced lavish, star studded adaptations of Shakespeare's History Plays, first the Henriad in 2012, and then the War of the Roses series in 2016, all under the banner of The Hollow Crown. Far more cinematic than the famous BBC Shakespeare series which ran from the late 70s to the early 80s, and with a fairly consistent cast, the series feels like a blockbuster franchise, which, in the age of Game of Thrones (itself inspired by this source material), gives the whole thing an accessibility and excitement. They work both as rigorous adaptations of the Bard's plays and as delicious entertainment. 

I've mostly been used to seeing productions (film and theatrical) of these plays independent of each other. This is the first time I've seen it presented as a series where I can follow both the historical and character arcs from one through to the end. It gave me a unique way to watch and experience these stories, seeing them as I never had before. 

Richard II
This is the story which sets the stage for England's cycle of civil war, romanced in history as the War of the Roses. It is in many ways a study in national leadership and the ways that leadership can lose hold and succumb to different visions. Headed by Ben Wishaw in an award winning performance this telling is presented as tragedy, a tale without "bad guys" but only those striving for their varying moralities. While I've seen productions which portray Richard's weakness as the problem, often personified in his effeminacy, his queerness, this version, which quite clearly paints Richard in a more sympathetic light, casts an openly queer actor in the role and queer codes him, but for a different purpose. I found it fascinating in how this film sees his governance approach more positively, while still giving his rival Bollingbroke a moral centre as well, ending with the usurping as at best a necessary evil and at worst, illegitimate, an illegitimacy which we will see the following play adaptations are going to struggle with. And at its centre is a remarkable performance by Wishaw. All it all it sets the stage for a series of events which will flow from Richard losing the crown and the legacy spilling out from that. 

Henry IV Parts One and Two

Jeremy Irons takes over the role of Bollingbroke, now King Henry IV, as he manages ruling his kingdom and managing his wayward son, Hal, played here by Tom Hiddleston. As some of the more popular plays in the Bard's oeuvre, it's hard not to enjoy this story regardless of the production and The Hollow Crown does a good job of balancing the political machinations of the court with the drunken fun of Hal and his tavern companions. Simon Russel Beale is masterful as the famously popular Falstaff, and accompanying him as Mistress Quickly is Julie Waters, also completely delightful in this role. At the centre of these films (and the next) is Hiddleston playing Hal, portrayed here differently than we are often used to, at least in film. Instead of being as heroic as he is often portrayed, here with Hiddleston in the role, he is entitled and spoiled as a youth and resigned to his own hypocrisy as an adult. He appears to struggle for that sense of legitimacy that he wants but feels he never quite gets. The two worlds of this narrative are contrasted and then blended very well as this story's rather fulfilling arc, one filled with both pathos and humour, generally very entertaining, and as part of a larger whole, chapters which make you want to see what happens next. 

Henry V

Unlike the famous film versions of this play, this Henry is less the heroic and noble. He is often presented as scheming, searching for the justification of his rule that his father chased after. He remains somewhat that irreverent youth playing at king. His claim to France, made so justly in other adaptations here feels more like an angry reaction from a jilted scoundrel. He's not unjust, he's just not as much the pinnacle of British kingship which he is often celebrated as in adaptations of this play, one of the best known and most enjoyed. Henry doesn't die in the text of this play but this film both begins and ends with his funeral set as framing sequence. This leads us into Henry VI and into the decline of this dynasty. This is likely the most pessimistic adaptation of this play I have seen and sets us into the next chapter. 

Other adaptations have attempted to pull in references to the past plays to present the real power of the death of Falstaff and the participation in battle of Falstaff's crew. But this time, being part of this series, it comes quite naturally and the power of it is palpable, as is Henry's reaction to it all. I think I felt the impact of these losses more fully here than I have in other adaptations where it felt like back story. Here it felt like a conclusion of a fully developed story, one of the benefits of seeing this presented as a series. 

Henry IV Parts One and Two

There are three plays named Henry VI, Part One, Part Two, and Part Three, but The Hollow Crown boils them down to two parts. While I have not read or seen productions of the three Henry VI plays, from what I have heard, this is likely for the best. There plays were written earlier than those chronologically before them and many believe Shakespeare had collaborators for these ones. They are often considered inconsistent and less engaging than the very popular plays in the first Henriad and the final play Richard III. 

But The Hollow Crown runs with them, crafting a Shakespearian Game of Thrones full of intrigue, back stabbing, battles, burnings, sex, and all kinds of soapy drama, The war of the roses truly goes into high gear here. The Yorkists and Lancasters famously choose their coloured roses in one of the opening scenes and the battle is fantastically on. 

The cast remains deliciously wonderful in their scenery chewing scheming. Especially standing out is Sophie Okonedo masterfully as Margaret who is the star of this show. Honestly these two parts make up some of the most entertaining of chapters. These events are often cited as the inspiration for George R.R. Martin's epic so why not present them in a similar form. It's tantalizing and pure enjoyment. And the fact it plays right into Richard III, one of my favourite of the Bard's plays, makes it all so exciting.

Richard III

While I've seen many adaptations of Richard III, this is the first time I've seen it presented as a "sequel" the the Henry VI plays, and even a culmination of the first Henriad as well. This presentation feels like the crescendo, the climax of a long arc and it is a satisfying one. Anchored by Cumberbatch's strong performance Richard III is final act in an opus and it is glorious.

The Hollow Crown as a whole was a delightful, powerful, enlightening, and engaging journey through an epic, on a Lord of the Rings scale. While none of the individual episodes eclipses my favourites of the other individual adaptations, as a whole it is a unique experience and entirely satisfying. It is a study in how governance is riddled with the sorts of pitfalls which allow for tyrants and injustice, but even in all this pessimism there is hope that the realm can somehow find its way through to recovery again. And perhaps right now in history, this hope is necessary. 

The Hollow Crown

Starring: Ben Wishaw, Patrick Stewart, Rory Kinnear, James Purefoy, Jeremy Irons, Tom Hiddleston, Simon Russel Beale, Julie Waters, Michael Gambon, Sophie Okonedo, Sally Hawkins, Judy Dench, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Ritter, Richard Griffiths