Coriolanus

Poor Maria. If you cannot understand the reviews, then you will certainly not understand the film. If you only watched 15 minutes you are not really in a position to make a judgement either of the acting or the film.

I just rented this movie thinking it would be good. Fiennes and Redgraves and Butler. I have read all these reviews. I cannot for the life of me understand them. I couldn't grasp this movie from the very minute of it's beginning. I didn;t realize it was Shakespeare until I heard their voices and words. I could not continue watching this after 15 min I give it 2 stars only that the acting was good even thought the movie was a dud. clearly we all didn't watch the same film :(

Ralph Fiennes’ directorial debut shows real promise.His acting is the centerpiece of the pumped up rhetoric of the violent aristocrat,Coriolanus.He has pulled off the impossible: to update to modern(Balkan) times,Shakespeare’s best Roman play and last tragedy,by retaining the Shakespearean language,set in a grimy,modern cityscape ridden with graffiti,rubble and the grey pall of deprivation.Showing chilly contempt for the unwashed masses upon whom his consulship depends.He is driven from Rome and joins forces with Aufidius(Butler) and marches on Rome out of revenge. Energy is at boiling point with images of a scarlet-faced Coriolanus,�his eye red as would burn Rome�.Aided by an excellent cast,great writing(Logan) and timely setting.His acting is immense(witness the contrast to Spider,where he stripped himself of the rhetoric of acting to become schizophrenic),he is steaming with fury.Coriolanus is a fantastic underdramatised piece full of knotty,complexities of language and imagery.Here we recall the Arab Spring,riots due to food shortages and the background of Iraq and Afghanistan.Akroyd(Hurt Locker) provides cinematography. Stunning.

EXCELLENT! The movie just came to San Diego this Friday and it was worth the wait. Shakespeare and I have never been great friends, probably due to the sad way it is taught in many high schools here in the US but I have always admired his work and plays. When his stories are told by great actors anyone can get through the language. The cast did an absolutely incredible job telling the story and bravo for casting Vanessa Redgrave as Volumnia, she was superb as always. I highly recommend this film.

What can I say? This film was just simply one of the best I have seen in my entire life! So gripping, so well acted and fantastic! Why can't other Shakespeare films be as superb as this one? This film brought Shakespeare's work truly alive! I couldn't agree more with one of the reviewers above when he said he was shocked to see that this film hadn't even been mentioned at the bafta's. This film was truly above the rest. I hope the lack of recognition by those lacking in culture and true art forms does not affect the director, the cast or the producers from creating something similar in the future. It makes one cry to see that to win a bafta award or an oscar, a film must lack intellectual depth. I think a new set of awards should be created to reward truly intelligent film making and acting. I say leave the baftas and the oscars to the pretty dumb. It takes a dumb panel to judge the truly dumb as great.

I can only echo most of what has been said by others. An extraordinarily assured piece of cinema, well acted by a very good cast with a sympathetically abridged text. The subject matter does lend itself to a modern treatment and I found it a very gripping experience. Definitely 5 stars.

The normal wooden, cardboard cut out style, of acting that is Ralph Fiennes is nowhere to be seen here.Fiennes gives a powerful and consummate performance that grips you by the throat...The mixing of old and contemporary imagery actually works well...It is an easy story to follow and this is intelligent film making with a decent plot and good acting..Terrific 4 stars

What on Earth has happened to film reviewing at Time Out London? They're not worth reading. I look at Trevor Johnson's pitiful review of Coriolanus and have to assume he's not interested either in film or theatre. Describing Menenius / Brian Cox as "effortlessly oleaginous scheming politico" is an almost matchless piece of stupidity. What is it? How can it be that something so completely falacious and vacuous has been printed? Does Trevor not know what the words he's using means? Did he not watch the film and inadvertently reveal in his review that he doesn't know anything about the play either? Was the beautifully clear script which was beautifully clearly delivered by the actors simply beyond him? Was his understanding of the language and observation of the performances really so intensely feeble that he honestly believed Brian Cox / Menenius was either "oleaginous" or "scheming"? Or did he not understand what he saw and heard and was too lazy or too timid to find and ask a grownup what it was all about? In Trevor, Dave Calhoun has a very ample competitor for title of "Least Useful, Vigilent and Articulate Writer on Film in the World Today". Just stop writing your grim stupidities and don't come back until you've educated yourselves sufficiently to presume to give an opinion in public.

How in god's name did this not get a BAFTA nomination? Who in their right mind would judge My Week with Marilyn above this, or Clooney or Oldman as giving performanaces better than Fiennes'? As for Vanessa Redgrave - this is without a shadow of a doubt one of her greatest performances, and when she is not mugging she's the best in the business.

Rather more engaging than Peter Hall's interpretation (he insisted on the pronunciation 'Cor-EYE-o-lanus') at the NT some years ago, in which Serena McKellen and Greg Hicks did sweaty topless battle in a sort of big sandpit on the Olivier stage, while those of us in the onstage seats (they were the only ones left) tried to look properly interested, well aware that 1100 pairs of eyes were scrutinising us more often than we would have liked. I'd left the play alone until this movie came along, and lawdy, Fiennes is smashing. Butler perhaps less so, tending to lose the language in the depths of his beard and Scots brogue, but butch and hunky enough to make up for it. Vanessa is superbly terrifying, a sort of negative anima in uniform, but what is most pleasing and memorable is to see the gusto with which Fiennes and Butler embrace (literally) the brutal homoerotic - if not indeed homosexual - desire pulsing beneath their final, fatal embrace. Lovely stuff.