ada
the leading man is my tpye
Gurlyndrobb
While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.
Allissa
.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.
cableaddict
The opening sequence was hypnotic, but why are we forced to read line after line after line of some bizarre story about a king and a motorcycle gang, and....I already didn't care and was bored out of my mind.Then the first main scene started, and we get to see 2 people kissing. for bout 5 minutes. ..... And nothing else........Wow. Gripping.The Ed Harris enters the scene and starts reciting Shakespeare, in a monotone voice that could only have come from massive amounts of drugs.Then his wife (the Queen? Whahhhh ???) joins the gang on screen, and sounds even more lifeless and bored than Ed Harris did.Computer-generated voices, reading the phone book, are far more interesting than whatever this is.If I watch the rest of this flick, I will surely have to kill myself, so I'm stopping now. Fifteen minutes in and it's already the worst movie I've seen in years.You've been warned.
christianfheins
The film idea itself is quite good, the idea of mixing a novel context with the modern times is quite interesting.The cast and acting are good, the first scenes of the film kind of hook you to keep on watching, but afterwards is just hard to follow, watch and understand. The film has a great idea but fells like the film lacks of execution and direction. To start; linking the stories and characters is really hard (try to use paper an pen otherwise you are lost). But probably the worst part of the movie and the reason is so hard to follow and understand is the speeches the cast has to go trough. I get the idea of making a contemporary film based on a Shakespeare novel from the 1600, but is the year 2015, and this kind of speech is to elaborated, complex and not very well suited for today's audience (unless the film is targeted to highly literate people). A novel such as Cymbeline requires time and re-reading to understand, a film should better work on the idea of Cymbeline and focus less on follow step by step the novel speech.Not the best movie example (nor my favorite), but Romeo and Juliet (1996) had some of this novel way of speaking, but understandable. Cymbeline (2015) is all the time that dense, complex and confusing way of narration from the 1600's.The best part of the movie, in my opinion, were the soundtracks, but not only the ones that appear on the credits (only 5 songs), rather the song from the beginning, for example. Couldn't find the artist of those songs, but my congrats to the artist, really good music selection.
Melody Ayres-Griffiths
The play Cymbeline, with its stereotypical and at times silly plot devices, has often been considered to be a self-parody, a work Shakespeare devised as a comedy of 'in-jokes' and 'over the top' pretenses. The events are absurd, conveniently co-incidental and even impossible, at points. It is farce, like a Shakespearean "Naked Gun". It is not meant to be taken seriously, at least by those who know it isn't.This has not been lost on the director of Cymbeline, the movie -- but it does seem to be lost on the majority of the audience that sees it. But, fear not, for now you have been enlightened and you can abandon any attempt to follow the plot and instead find amusement in Ethan Hawke's slimy scheming, Ed Harris' constipated look as he does his best to recite his lines, Anton Yelchin proving he can be as creepy as he can be adorable, John Leguizamo being John Leguizamo and so forth. Now, it is possible to follow the dialog (and hence the plot) if you concentrate but it's probably advised to read the Wikipedia page on Cymbeline (the play) before you watch the movie. Then you won't get lost. Don't worry, it won't spoil anything (much). After all, this is a parody of Shakespeare written by Shakespeare -- there are no surprises. Everything is laid out in advance, or told to us in monologues before it happens. It's a play by the numbers.Okay, so the plot is stupid and silly. But, is the film otherwise worth watching? Yes, for what it is. It's not pretentious, as other reviewers have suggested. Cymbeline does not take itself seriously. Firstly, it's set around Hallowe'en. The characters dress like stereotypes. The choice of decor and cars are somewhat unique. The actors overact, sometimes to the point of being hammy (I'm looking at you, Ethan Hawke!) If you take it as a parody it's amusing enough to be worth a hundred minutes of your time.There's also something to be said for seeing bikers reciting Shakespeare.
madbeast
Michael Almereyda once again stuffs a Shakespearean play into modern day society and comes up with an incomprehensible mess. His film of "Hamlet" at least used as its framework an enduring masterpiece with themes as relevant to today's world as when it was written. But "Cymbeline" is an obscure, rarely produced oddity from Shakespeare's canon which employs unlikely plotting centered on obsolete sexual morality which has no relevance to today's world. Why Almereyda thought this archaic chestnut needed to be set in the present day is baffling.It is up to the actors to inject some life into this dull mess and for the most part, they are not up to the task. Dakota Johnson is stunning to look at as the ill-used Imogen, but gives a one-note performance that is insufferable to watch. Ethan Hawke brings to the evil Iachimo the same dull monotone that he employed as Almereyda's Hamlet. And Penn Badgley makes the gullible Posthumus seem like a refugee from a boy band. Only Delroy Lindo and Ed Harris project the charisma necessary to make their characters interesting, although demoting Harris' Cymbeline from the King of Britain in the original text to the head of a motorcycle gang is unimaginably reductive.Almereyda seems to have a fetish for updating Shakespearean drama into the modern world and has no issue with pummeling it into a different shape to fit his concept no matter what the Bard's original intention was while writing it. The approach worked intermittently with "Hamlet" but fails completely with "Cymbeline." Almereyda would be well advised to seek out contemporary stories to make films of and leave Shakespeare alone.