shakespeare – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Hamnet

Hamnet (2025)
Written by Chloé Zhao & Maggie O’Farrell
Directed by Chloé Zhao

In 2025, I did a series on Shakespeare adaptations, which was a lot of fun because I got to introduce my wife to several of his stories. She was, of course, familiar with Romeo and Juliet and knew the names of several plays, just not the stories or characters. I got to introduce her to Hamlet, my favorite play, through Branagh’s adaptation and was happy to see her find pleasure in what a rich piece of art it is. Despite having been an English major and taking multiple Shakespeare classes, I didn’t really know much about the author himself. I don’t think that’s too dissimilar from most English majors’ experiences; he doesn’t get as much focus as his work does. And while this film is more fiction than fact, it attempts to bring a human face to someone who has become such a distant, iconic figure.

Movie Review – Titus

Titus (1999)
Written by William Shakespeare & Julie Taymor
Directed by Julie Taymor

Titus Andronicus was the first of Shakespeare’s tragedies, written between 1588 and 1593. It feels different than his later work, more concerned with the spectacle of blood & gore that was made popular by his contemporaries. Some critics hold that Shakespeare was parodying popular plays of the time, like the work of Christopher Marlowe, which was immensely bloody. Death was something people in the West had a far closer proximity to in those days, incredibly violent deaths. Disease ran rampant and was not a pretty thing to watch take a person’s life. While war had not become industrialized yet, it was more intimate. To kill with a blade meant smelling the breath of your enemy, feeling their blood on your hands. This was also an era where the mythologizing of the Roman Empire was in full swing, used to justify England’s first moves towards colonizing other lands. When the Victorian Era came about with its censorious bent, Titus was considered uncouth and fell out of favor.

Movie Review – Hamlet (1996)

Hamlet (1996)
Written by William Shakespeare & Kenneth Branagh
Directed by Kenneth Branagh

If there was one Shakespeare play I would choose as my introduction to the writer, it would be Hamlet. I wouldn’t pick it because it is the easiest to read but because it exemplifies those literary elements that make Shakespeare’s work resonate across cultures and eras. Kenneth Branagh made this production based on the text presented in the First Folio, which is considered the most official version. That said, the director also allowed himself to play with the images. Flashbacks are employed throughout in a manner that couldn’t have been possible on stage. The result is what I believe to be THE film adaptation of Hamlet.

Movie Review – Romeo + Juliet

William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996)
Written by William Shakespeare & Craig Pearce and Baz Luhrmann
Directed by Baz Luhrmann

Romeo + Juliet exists as the confluence of two things. The first was the Shakespeare boom of the 1990s when films based on or inspired by his work had a moment in popular culture. At the same time, Australian director Baz Luhrmann received heaps of praise for his directorial debut, Strictly Ballroom. Luhrman’s approach to the text was that he saw Shakespeare as a writer for the masses, and thus, if the Bard made a contemporary feature film, it would be bold & loud. Luhrmann reasoned the popular entertainment of the day were things like bear-baiting and prostitution; Shakespeare would have played things in a way that kept the crowds happy.

Movie Review – Richard III

Richard III (1995)
Written by William Shakespeare & Ian McKellan and Richard Loncraine
Directed by Richard Loncraine

Shakespeare was no stranger to putting despicable people at the center of his narratives. The point was often to explore them in more complexity than a one-dimensional story might provide. He didn’t excuse evil but wanted to understand how these minds operated. How else can we prevent future evil if we don’t understand the roots of the present one? Richard III is a profoundly evil figure who revels in the suffering he causes others, yet he doesn’t exist in a vacuum. He is the byproduct of a cruel system that inevitably makes people like him.

Movie Review – Henry V (1989)

Henry V (1989)
Written by William Shakespeare & Kenneth Branagh
Directed by Kenneth Branagh

Many millennials’ earliest film experience with Shakespeare was probably Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, which we will review soon. However, that was not the start of the Shakespearean renaissance in film. While the Bard’s plays have always been popular in one form or another, Kenneth Branagh’s work produced several of the most complete film adaptations of the stage plays. Henry V was Branagh’s directorial debut, followed by four more pictures (Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and As You Like It).

Movie Review – Prospero’s Books

Prospero’s Books (1991)
Written by Willliam Shakespeare & Peter Greenaway
Directed by Peter Greenaway

I’ve always enjoyed The Tempest most of all Shakespeare’s comedies. I think it’s a fun, beautiful celebration of Shakespeare’s work in the theater. This isn’t a unique analysis on my part, but it is a widely accepted reading of the play. Prospero is the Bard; this island is his stage, and the magic he employs is really just imagination & writing. The story seems to be a revenge tale at the start but becomes a celebration of life by the end. Our protagonist realizes the revenge he seeks is not as important as the happiness his child could have, so he cedes to the future rather than dwells in the past.

Movie Review – The Taming of the Shrew

The Taming of the Shrew (1967)
Written by William Shakespeare, Franco Zeffirelli, Paul Dehn, and Suso Cecchi d’Amico
Directed by Franco Zeffirelli

Shakespeare was a product of his time. Yes, we can find instances of the playwright challenging the mores of his society, and he was a brilliant weaver of language. However, his views on marriage and women weren’t revolutionary, as we can see in the comedy The Taming of the Shrew. Perhaps it should make us feel better that from the play’s debut in the late 16th century, criticisms were leveled at what it says about women. I don’t expect these to have been very loud protests based on how women were treated in the centuries that followed.

Movie Review – Throne of Blood

Throne of Blood (1957)
Written by William Shakespeare, Shinobu Hashimoto, Ryūzō Kikushima, Akira Kurosawa, and Hideo Oguni
Directed by Akira Kurosawa

I could have gone with more traditional adaptations of MacBeth, but I wanted to see how Kurosawa interpreted the work. I was also interested in learning how far back Japan’s history with Shakespeare’s work went to understand how well-known the play was. Shakeapeare’s plays arrived in Japan during the Meiji Restoration when power was reconsolidated under the Emperor. If you watch Shogun, it is the beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate, which ended with the Meiji Restoration. It was marked by the opening of Japan’s borders to foreign influence in a way that had never been seen before.

Movie Review – Julius Caesar (1953)

Julius Caesar (1953)
Written by William Shakespeare, adapted by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Once upon a time, I was a student at university who didn’t know exactly what to major in. I had chosen mass communications, but after taking some of the English prerequisite classes for all students at my liberal arts college I found I really loved those teachers and the subject matter. Upon becoming an English major, I had some new required classes. Two of those were Shakespeare: Comedies and Shakespeare: Tragedies. I wasn’t a stranger to the work of the Bard. I was homeschooled but still assigned Romeo and Juliet to read. An afterschool Literature Club that our local homeschool group formed had us read Julius Caesar and even performed excerpts from it at the homeschool group talent show. I got to deliver Mark Antony’s “Friends, romans, countrymen” speech which I am sure if I reviewed the crumbling VHS tape I’d pick on several areas of improvement.