Twelfth Night

Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night (1996) is a satisfying, humorous movie.  It's like watching a good Branagh-produced film without the unfortunate side effect of having to watch Mr. Banagh, himself.  Ben Kingsley is fantastic as Feste, one of my favorite Shakespeare character types, the wise fool.  There's a great musical scene that alternates between Kingsley playing a concertina and another character playing the same song on the piano.  While musically beautiful, it's also pretty awkward, as Nunn decides to maximize the sexual tension between Viola (disguised as a young man named Cesario) and Orsino, a mature man who betrays some weakness to Cesario's subtle advances.  Taking this and Orsino's rapture and finding that Cesario, whom he has believed to be a man, is actually a woman, thus eligible for marriage, shows Nunn's willingness to expose the homoerotic undertones of Shakespeare's gender-bending comic plots.
Another attempted seduction provides a highlight as Malvolio, played by Nigel Hawthorne clad in yellow stockings, struts his stuff for Olivia, played wonderfully by Helena Bonham Carter.  If you've seen Branagh's Much Ado about Nothing, or Hoffman's A Midsummer Night's Dream, this film is familiar territory.  So, if you like those films, you'll probably like this one, as long as you don't mind a slightly lower sound and color quality.  The acting is solid, and Shakespeare's language shines brilliantly.

Shakespeare Movies: Throne of Blood

Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood is a clever, deliberately paced, and broodingly shot adaptation of Macbeth set in feudal Japan.  The plot is quite true to the play, and where it deviates it does so creatively.  It's only fair to admit that I'm not a fan of this sort of movie.  I've tried watching Kurosawa's masterpiece, Seven Samurai, and was too bored to get through it.  For anyone familiar with the Macbeth story, however, Throne of Blood is entertaining enough, even in it's dull moments.  For example, when Washizu and Miki (the Macbeth and Banquo characters, respectively) ride their horses back and forth through the fog for what seems like an eternity, just to show us how lost they are, you've got to laugh.
While music abounds in a number of Shakespeare plays, it's absent from his Macbeth.  In Kurosawa's version, though, songs contribute effectively.  Some of the events are moved around a bit, and it works.  The hand-washing scene takes place only after the enemy troops have begun to approach the castle, for instance.  "Lady Macbeth" not only manages to retain her sanity a bit longer, but is much more logical throughout.  Instead of attacking her husband's manhood to move him to regicide, she builds a logical argument based on the fear that Miki will betray the prophecy to the Great Lord (the King Duncan character).  More examples are present, but I won't give them all away.
The ending is also quite different, and I'm not going to give that away, either, because it's really the big payoff.  If you're going to watch the film, you'll want to that to be a surprise.  Overall, it's a satisfying take on Macbeth.  Some of the introspective monologues are lacking, replaced by moody scenery and visual symbols that are not as effective, but are interesting in themselves.  Evil Spirit, Kurosawa's version of the witches, was my favorite part.  Now, I'm looking forward to jumping ahead in time and seeing another version of Macbeth.