William Shakespeare

CHICAGO – The plays of William Shakespeare, influencing culture and morality for over 400 years, continue to open themselves up to new interpretations and settings. Ralph Fiennes directs and stars in a film version adaptation of “Coriolanus,” set against the modern day machinations of politics and war.

Rating: 1.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Roland Emmerich has been commonly mocked for his larger-than-life blockbusters that include “Godzilla,” “The Day After Tomorrow,” and “2012.” I would rather sit through a marathon of all three of those works back-to-back-to-back than suffer through “Anonymous” one more time. While those movies have undeniable flaws, they do so on a grand scale common with the words guilty pleasure. There’s absolutely nothing pleasurable about this self-serious and remarkably stupid drama.

CHICAGO – Risk-taking visionaries are always exciting to watch in action, even when their gambles don’t quite pay off. Yet while the recent projects tackled by Julie Taymor have sported great promise on paper, their externalized metaphors often work against the material she’s aiming to enhance. In her Beatles musical “Across the Universe,” soldiers were seen carrying the Statue of Liberty into Vietnam while singing, “She’s so heavy.”

CHICAGO – As movie animation domination continues, “Gnomeo and Juliet” throws its stone cap into the ring, and has a lively story that tweaks it source, while respecting its power. James McAvoy and Emily Blunt are the voices of the star-crossed lovers, with the addition of familiar vocals from Michael Caine and Ozzy Osbourne, among others.

CHICAGO – There are few things more excruciating to sit through than a botched adaptation of Shakespeare. The Bard’s language is so intricately textured and poetically structured that it must be fully understood in order to be adequately delivered. An audacious mess like Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo and Juliet” recalls memories of amateur high school productions where students raced through the dialogue in order to sound naturalistic.

CHICAGO – Following our rave review this week of the new BBC and Royal Shakespeare Company production of William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” we have secured for you a rare opportunity to win two Blu-rays and two DVDs for four winners!

CHICAGO – Having been a theater major who openly knelt at the altar of William Shakespeare for many of my formative stage years and then later became a film critic, I believe the number of versions of “Hamlet” I have seen to number around eight - three times on stage and five on celluloid. And yet I still was blown away by BBC’s production of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre version of the timeless play.