Netflix play reviews

[choirfarm]

Here are some of my personal reviews:

 

Much Ado About Nothing with Kenneth Braughnau ( sp??) - Excellent version. After a poem at the very beginning, the soldiers all come in to take a shower while the credits roll and you see tons of male rear ends. I just covered up the tv with posterboard when I showed it to my high school class, but for my boys I just let it go. There is a scene where they show that the girl has been unfaithful. He thinks it is his fiancee when it is really the maid and her lover calling out his fiance's name. Lots of grunting and thrusting. I skipped this scene and summarized it. Michael Keaton is the dumb jailer and there is a play on words on the word a--. I left that alone, but another family may feel differently. Other than that, it is great.

 

Our Town with Paul Newman. It took awhile for the boys to get into the staging, but once they did they LOVED this movie. I bawled like a baby in the third scene. It really hit me how quickly life goes. The boys were just rolling their eyes.

 

Importance of Being Earnest with Colin Firth- We saw this a year ago.. I remember loving it and the boys understanding the humor. I'm sorry.. I don't remember explicit scenes.

 

The Crucible with Daniel Day Lewis- Very well done. We watched this a couple of years ago, so once again my memory is fuzzy as far as objectionable material. If I remember right at the beginning Abigail ( Wynnona Ryder) if pretty forward...maybe grabbing his crotch. I thought it was fine for upper junior high/ high school and served as a GREAT discussion starter about what girls can do and about being alone with them, etc. Who was at fault for the affair, etc.

 

Everyone else, chime in.

 

Christine

[Lizzie in Ma]

Here are some of my personal reviews:

 

Much Ado About Nothing with Kenneth Braughnau ( sp??) - Excellent version. After a poem at the very beginning, the soldiers all come in to take a shower while the credits roll and you see tons of male rear ends. I just covered up the tv with posterboard when I showed it to my high school class, but for my boys I just let it go. There is a scene where they show that the girl has been unfaithful. He thinks it is his fiancee when it is really the maid and her lover calling out his fiance's name. Lots of grunting and thrusting. I skipped this scene and summarized it. Michael Keaton is the dumb jailer and there is a play on words on the word a--. I left that alone, but another family may feel differently. Other than that, it is great.

Everyone else, chime in.

Christine

 

I absolutely love all of Kenneth Branagh's versions. That is one of our favorites. Also the Midsummer's Nights Dream with Kevin Kline and his Hamlet. Superb.

[Heather in WI]

Kenneth Branagh's Henry V is amazing, too. My 5th and 3rd grader watched it this year for the first time and loved it! :-)

[Irishmommy]

I <3 Kenneth!!!! That is all I wish to say.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

We recently watched Noises Off and most of David Tennant's Hamlet.

 

Noises Off is a slapstick sort of show about a theatre troupe that is trying to put on a play. It has a good cast with Michael Caine, John Ritter, and Carol Burnett. Each of the three acts has the troupe doing the same lines of the play. The first act is a rehearsal, the second is their out of town run, shown from backstage. Things do not go well with either the rehearsal or the performance. Actors flub their lines, argue and have relationship spats. DH, who saw it live in college said that it was pretty true to the stage version.

 

Noises Off has a bawdy premise to the story. I would say it is on a par with something like Merry Wives of Windsor or She Stoops to Conquer. For a modern compararison think of Married with Children or Saturday Night Live.

 

Hamlet was a good version of the play, but you just can't get past the fact (IMHO) that the play is long and does tend to drag. I'm not at all convinced that it is a good entry play for younger viewers, although having Tennant and Patrick Stewart in the cast did help us stick with it. I liked the scene where Polonius gives his speech to Laertes. It seemed both funnier and a little more pathetic than other versions that I've seen.

 

Update: The Hamlet can be seen in full on the PBS Great Performances website

 

I watched most of the rest of this Hamlet yesterday. One of Ophelia's madness scenes has her taking off her dress and being there in her underwear while the queen tries to cover her up. There is also a scene after Hamlet kills Polonius where King Claudius has him tied to a chair and is interrogating him to find out what he did with the body. Really, I've seen this play before and certainly read through it. I'd forgotten how dark the whole thing was.

 

On the other hand, I've revised my opinion of Tennant in the role. He does a good job of straddling the line between madness and intention. It is hard to decide if his actions are controlled and calculating attempts to catch the king in the murder or if he really has gone mad with grief.

Edited December 8, 2010 by Sebastian (a lady)

[Jyniffrec]

I will be taking notes on these. Thanks for posting!

[Gratia271]

Importance of Being Earnest with Colin Firth- We saw this a year ago.. I remember loving it and the boys understanding the humor. I'm sorry.. I don't remember explicit scenes.

 

We recently watched it, and there was nothing explicit as far as we were concerned. We loved it!

[JumpedIntoTheDeepEndFirst]

We recently watched Noises Off and most of David Tennant's Hamlet.

 

Noises Off is a slapstick sort of show about a theatre troupe that is trying to put on a play. It has a good cast with Michael Caine, John Ritter, and Carol Burnett. Each of the three acts has the troupe doing the same lines of the play. The first act is a rehearsal, the second is their out of town run, shown from backstage. Things do not go well with either the rehearsal or the performance. Actors flub their lines, argue and have relationship spats. DH, who saw it live in college said that it was pretty true to the stage version.

 

Noises Off has a bawdy premise to the story. I would say it is on a par with something like Merry Wives of Windsor or She Stoops to Conquer. For a modern compararison think of Married with Children or Saturday Night Live.

 

Hamlet was a good version of the play, but you just can't get past the fact (IMHO) that the play is long and does tend to drag. I'm not at all convinced that it is a good entry play for younger viewers, although having Tennant and Patrick Stewart in the cast did help us stick with it. I liked the scene where Polonius gives his speech to Laertes. It seemed both funnier and a little more pathetic than other versions that I've seen.

 

Update: The Hamlet can be seen in full on the PBS Great Performances website

 

I watched most of the rest of this Hamlet yesterday. One of Ophelia's madness scenes has her taking off her dress and being there in her underwear while the queen tries to cover her up. There is also a scene after Hamlet kills Polonius where King Claudius has him tied to a chair and is interrogating him to find out what he did with the body. Really, I've seen this play before and certainly read through it. I'd forgotten how dark the whole thing was.

 

On the other hand, I've revised my opinion of Tennant in the role. He does a good job of straddling the line between madness and intention. It is hard to decide if his actions are controlled and calculating attempts to catch the king in the murder or if he really has gone mad with grief.

 

 

I think the answer is both. When he first meet up with his friends and they suggest bringing the players in to perform for the king there a brief moments where they seem to surprise him and he answers questions quite sanely and then seems to realize he has forgotten his own plan. Then when he is with his mother he seems to completely loose control without any intention at all.

 

Tennant does crazy as well as any actor I've seen. He is a master at bringing his entire being into the role-voice, facial expressions, body language. It is quite amazing, for example, to see in Harry Potter how in a just a few seconds on screen he can convey the madness that has taken over Barty Crouch Jr.

 

Henry V with KB is a favorite around here. DS1 enjoyed it from about the age of 3 and would ask for it whenever given the chance.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I think you're right that Tennant does straddle the line. For example he seems quite sane in his presentation of the players and then you realize he's barefooted. It makes him seem much more unhinged. I think that other versions I've seen have a Hamlet that chooses one or the other (madness or method).

 

I also found Gertrude more sympathetic in this version. Not a victim in the sense that I felt she was under duress from Claudius, but sympathetic in that the scene where Hamlet confronts her seems to show her more unsettled in the situation she finds herself in.

 

Oh, I love that Henry V. I still get chills listening to the St. Crispin's Day speech. (But I have to confess that KB's Hamlet put me to sleep.)

 

One that I wish there were a movie version of is Stacy Keech playing Richard III with the Folger. He did such a great job of making Richard both nefarious and someone you enjoyed watching. A very convincing badness. Alas, I have to make to with the excellent Ian McKellen version.

[amyco]

Not a play, but a musical we really liked was Oklahoma with Hugh Jackman.

 

We recently watched Julius Caesar with Marlon Brando. Excellent! A little hard to follow if you aren't familiar with the story, though.