SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Motompa Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

Joanna Mccarty Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

margotmaesmm An intense, must-see thrilling performance from both Cumberbatch and Miller. The dialogues filled with static chemistry, a beautiful and perfect mix between beauty and horror, a destabilized yet animated stage that shows all facets of life and death. A hypnotizing and cutting-edge play, a real work of art that is absolutely not to be missed.

sesht (Updated after watching the version in which Jonny Lee Miller plays the creation, having swapped roles with Benedict Cumberbatch, who now plays the creator) - I still can't believe that this one took 4 years, in this day and age, to reach these shores. Having said that, I'm real glad that it does not look or feel jaded / dated to that extent.The prod and the sound design, the intimate camera-work and the score remains the same, along with the rest of the cast (most of them) reprising their characters for this roundabout. Almost everything, and if there are differences, they might have been too minor to warrant attention, especially since I watched the earlier version of this just 2 weeks previously.However, there is no diluting the effect of all the shocking events that do transpire during the tale's runtime. In spite of the fact that I've read and seen many adaptations put together (I also remember the Kenneth Branagh attempt on this, with De Niro as the creation), the way the screenplay has been strung together packs a punch every time it delves into the darkness of the human spirit, the depths to which we plumb, and result in another plumbing the same depths. There is no subtlety in caling out the hypocrisy at play, and that IS a good thing, since it needs to be called out and focused on, in the limited runtime this work of art has. There is no doubt cast on who the bad soul (yep, soul) is, and how that one soul pulls the strings. Power at play, especially creationist, always evokes the analogy 'giving a baby a loaded gun', and then regretting / complaining about the consequences.One of my friends remarked that it was more apt the way it was before, since Cumberbatch's Frankenstein was not as powerful as Millers', and Miller's creation/creature was relatively more soft and mellow that our sympathy was with the creature, not accompanied by the fear, disgust and revulsion that we ought to have felt as well, the way it did when Cumberbatch rendered his interpretation of the same character. I agreed with him to a large extent, but did not mind the fact that our sympathies led our emotions rather than it being the other way around. What would the point have been of another interpretation, if it was more of the same?These (following) streams of thoughts are based on viewing the version in which Benedict Cumberbatch plays the creation, and Lee Miller his creator.The story of Frankenstein, as one knows, has been told many times over. The biggest thing this production had going for it, other than the fact that it had Boyle, fresh off of many successes, directing a play such as this, was that both the actors playing contemporary versions of, ahem, a detective who need not remain nameless, in BBC and CBS productions of the same (to be fair, the latter is much too recent, so the coincidence factor is not all that great/wide), varying in the number of episodes and their respective run-times as well. I'm a fan of both series, with each having completed 3 seasons (the CBS rendering with Lee Miller is still going strong on its 3rd, but with 24 45-min episodes to film for each season, while retaining the overall quality, it's not easy going for them.I'll update this review after the version in which the actors swap parts.For now, this one was superb, with each actor taking center-stage alternatively as the play progressed. Cumberbatch owns the first act, being born, discarded, and then spending an year with a blind old man who teaches him to read, think and debate. As the play progressed, it was indeed amazing to watch the rotating stage change for each scene in each act, along with listening to the fantastic score enhancing the quality of the production. Each transition was seamless, and I, for one, was held spellbound by the fact that the actors, especially the leads, could deliver their lines with such conviction and memory. I am a big fan of improvisation, but somehow felt that learning lines and delivering them in character seemed to be very daunting, and having these great actors making it look and sound easy was like watching a master at work, much like watching the great Timothy Spall play Mr. Turner a few weeks back at the cinema.Going in, I only knew of the main leads, but was surprised to see a pre-Skyfall Naomie Harris as Frankenstein's wife, the only human other than the blind old man who dared to get close to her husband's creation. I confess to being a tad disappointed by some seemingly- stilted line-readings from George Harris, who played M. Frankenstein, who I had seen earlier playing the character Kingsley in the Harry Potter movies, in which his performance and casting seemed pretty apt.The ending was pitch-perfect, with each character irrevocably linked to the other, needing one another to survive, though they are self- sworn to cause the other's destruction.A wonderful opportunity afforded to catch this on the big screen, that should not be missed.

morrison-dylan-fan As the countdown to Halloween started to begin,I decided to take a look at the listings of a local cinema for one-off screenings of Horror titles.Originally planning to watch The Exorcist, (which has been sitting on my shelf for years,waiting to get watched on DVD!) for the first time,I suddenly noticed that a screening was going to be held for Danny Boyle's filmed on stage adaptation of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein.Since having found Boyle's 2013 movie Trance to be a fantastic Neo-Noir,I decided that it would be a good time to see Boyle bring the monster (or as it is named here "creature") to life.The plot:Delighted with being the first ever person to bring someone back from the dead, (thanks to robbing body parts and a corpse from a grave yard) scientist Victor Frankenstein is horrified by the appearance of his creature, (who Victor decides not to name) which leads to Frankenstein throwing his creation into the wilderness,in the hope that it will rot away and fade from his memory.Discovering a survival instinct,the creature picks itself up from the ground,and begins to search for his creator.Attempting to learn human skills,and to also make friends,the creature finds himself being beaten up by the local residence,due to him looking like "a monster".Running into a local blind man,the creature is shocked to find someone who does not judge him on his appearance.Getting taught to read and write,the creature's only friendship is destroyed,when the blind man's family pay him a visit,and kick the creature out for looking like a beast.With now having the full skills to talk,read ,write and lie,the creature goes in search of Victor Frankenstein,in the hope that his creator will build for him a woman.View on the film:Avoiding the tradition of using wide panning shots that show the audience at a concert/show,director Danny Boyle and cinematography Kevin French, (who both reunited for the 2012 Olympics opening) instead place the viewer intimately close to the stage,which along with allowing the actors performances to pull the audience into the tale,also allows Boyle and French to slowly unravel Frankenstein's industrial wasteland across the screen.Backed by the superb Industrial hum from Underworld,Boyle and French cover the film in metallic bronze to show the decaying post- industrial revolution world that the creature rises from,with "fresh" colours and objects (such as green grass),being burnt away across the screen.Contrasting the metallic colours,Boyle also shows an excellent skill in casting a Gothic Horror shadow across the screen,with black becoming a dominating set colour,as Victor Frankenstein,the creature,and those nearest to them descend into hell. Along with the darkening colours,Boyle also shows an unflinching eye for Horror,with Boyle using excellent stilted camera moves to push the audience face first into Franenstein and his creature's deadly outbursts of violence,and betrayal.Taking much longer to reach the screen/stage than originally expected, (Boyle and the writer originally planned to bring Victor Frankenstein alive in the 90's)the screenplay by Nick Dear shows no sign of rust gathering up on Frankenstein's mesmerising creation.Using the first 30 minutes to display the creature gradually "building" his own personality,Dear places the "voice" and troubled psychological aspect of the creature right at the centre of the adaptation,with Dear smartly showing Frankenstein and the towns people's interactions from the outcast point of view of the creature.Whilst the screenplay does show that Frankenstein and the towns people turn the creature into "the monster" that they fear,due to being focused on the permanently damaged exterior and not the welcoming, and repairable interior of the creature.Despite showing that Victor Frankenstein and the towns people are the cause of the creatures transformation into a monster,Dear also shows that he is unafraid to show the creature in a horrifically violent light,with Dear's delicate building up of Victor and the towns folk Gothic melodrama being burnt to the ground,as the creature strikes at the very heart of what Frankenstein holds dear.Playing the role for the second,and final time (both actors would switch between playing Frankenstein and the creature every other day) Benedict Cumberbatch gives an unexpectedly subtle,vulnerable performance,with the opening of the film solely focusing on the creature rising from the dead,allowing Cumberbatch to place the viewer deep inside the skin of the character,thanks to Cuberbatch slowly showing the creature transform from being speechless and native,to using human skills such as lying to his deadly advantage.Contrasting Cumberbatch's quiet,subtle performance,Johnny Lee Miller gives a delightfully wild and wicked performance as Victor Frankenstein,as Miller shows that the only drive Frankenstein has in life is to satisfy his own ego,with Victor ignoring any ethical or psychological "flaws" in his mad desire,until it is too late,and a monster rises from the ashes of a creature.

thehuntfamily-26-446497 My only wish with seeing this on the big screen is " I wish I had seen it live"..My daughter took me to see it at the Luna cinema in Leederville on Sunday and the viewing was Jonny lee miller as Frankenstein and Benedict Cumberbatch as Victor.I was moved, by Jonny's performance as he takes you past the monster and you see a man in search of love and acceptance. I was at loss for words, you cannot fault the mans performance..Had I got to know Frankenstein, I would have taken him in and befriended him? maybe.Benedict Cumberbatch was very good as Victor also, a mad genius, a tortured soul with no one recognizing his brilliance and what he could do, or believed he was as good as God. He found the secret to life itself. He made man.You feel sorry for him, yet angry as well, He disregards friends and family in his desperate pursuit of his monster, and will do anything and all to destroy it, not taking into account that his monster has become educated and only wants to be accepted in main society.. something we all crave, inside us there is a bit of victor/Frankenstein. If there is one thing to do this weekend check out your local cinema and see if they are screening this gem, it will blow you away.