Rosaline

And this week's Friday night movie has been... Rosaline!

Original image located here. Accessed 13th February 2026

This movie came to my attention through a high concept: A re-telling of Romeo and Juliet through an unseen character - a love interest of Romeo that is immediately disregarded once Juliet enters the picture. Sounds like a challenge to me....

So this is pretty much Romeo and Juliet thrust into the lens of deconstruction and post-modernism (the kind of lens that served Shrek so well). It come across like a fanfiction someone wrote to try and force modern logic and perceptions into a centuries-old text.
And yet, I had so much fun with this movie. There were some great jokes, the cast seem to be having the time of their lives and there are certainly nods to Shakespeare that one such nerd, like myself, could pick up on. The description in the above paragraph may sound like a disaster but somehow it works.

Great stuff

Hamlet

 And this week's Friday night movie has been... Hamlet!

Original image located here. Accessed 8th March 2024

Best Picture Oscar winner no.: 21 (1948)

 I recall watching the Academy Awards on TV back in 1998. It was the seventieth anniversary year so, as part of the broadcast, a montage was shown of previous Best Picture winners. Many of these winners were new to me and I saw plenty of names I recognised. But one standout was the 1948 winner: An actual adaptation of a Shakespeare play.
This was a major surprise to me because the Academy didn't strike me as the kind who would honour such an adaptation. This is compounded by the fact that, as anyone who has adapted Shakespeare will tell you, the challenge presented by Shakespeare is taking material that has been performed countless times before and putting a new spin on it. 
Needless to say, when I started this year-long project, this was one movie I was keen on seeing - moreso considering that this featured Laurence Olivier, quite possibly the greatest Shakespearean actor ever lived, in the title role. And director. And producer. 

And what Olivier does is approach the title with that of a horror movie. There are plenty of shadows, towering sets, lots of fog, and striking angles, all building up to an astonishing atmosphere. And even the Ghost is the most frightening interpretation that I have ever seen.
Other highlights are Jean Simmons' performance of Ophelia, nailing the moment where she goes insane, Patrick Troughton (yes, THAT Patrick Troughton) as the Player King, the handling of Claudius' character and the final duel. But in the end, it's Olivier's show and he delivers in spades.
Certainly a surprise to see a Shakespeare adaptation win the Best Picture Oscar but it seems it was a well-deserved winner.

Throne of Blood

And this week's Friday Night movie has been... Throne of Blood!

Original image located here. Accessed 5th May 2023

Last year I watched Ran - Akira Kurosawa's take on the Shakespeare play King Lear. This year I watch Throne of Blood - Akira Kurosawa's take on the Shakespeare play Macbeth ("Aahhhhh! Hot potato, orchestra stalls, Puck will make amends!").

Part of the thrill of watching this play is seeing a play i am very familiar with being shown in a different context - after all that is the challenge of doing Shakespeare: presenting something that has been done countless times before in a different light. So whilst this play may not follow the text to the letter, there are still some recognisable scenes and the plot progresses the same.
But what this film really understands about the source material is that the play has a sense of mystery and dread about it. And the film certainly runs with it, what with having a lot of fog, paranoia, ominous moments and a tiny number of locations. Indeed the triumph of this movie is that does a lot with what little it has.
Throw in some compelling performances from the two leads (Toshiro Mifune and Isuzu Yamada) and a death scene that has to seen to be believed and we have a movie that has lasted very well against the march of time.
Damn Kurosawa sure knew how to make a movie, eh?

Ran

And this week's Friday night movie has been... Ran!

Original image located here. Accessed 17th June 2022

Anyone heard of this? This was a Japanese movie from 1985, directed by the legendary Akira Kurosawa.
Akira Kurosawa. Any film geek worth their salt knows the name. The man who announced Japanese cinema to the rest of the world. The man who gave us the Seven Samurai and inspired a whole trope in it's wake. The man known for his samurai epics, humanistic approach and his Shakespeare adaptations.
And Ran is, apparently, one of his best. It's one of his aforementioned Shakespeare adpatations, in this case, King Lear.

In a word: Extraordinary. I thought I was familiar with Kurosawa, having seen Rashomon and Seven Samurai, but this is something else entirely. So much to admire I don't know where to begin: I like the use of landscapes, I like the acting, I how many of the battle scenes take place in silence. I like how is a different take on tried and tested material (Shakespeare amirite?). I like the battle choreography and the beauty present.
At first i didn't what to make of this movie but eventually, it did reveal itself as nothing less than a triumph
Some say that this movie was the end result of a lifetime in movie making. Kurosawa was 75 when he made this and it seems that what he learnt over the years is there on the screen.
I believe it.