Cymbeline
Director: Michael Almereyda
Year Released: 2014
Rating: 1.5
One of Shakespeare's lesser-known works gets transported to the modern age by Almereyda (who did something similar with Hamlet) in which biker gang leader Cymbeline (Ed Harris) banishes his daughter Imogen (Dakota Johnson) and Posthumus (Penn Badgley) after the two secretly wed, which kick starts a complicated plot-line that features lots of betrayal and fibbing and death. While many have taken the Bard and successfully adapted him for the 'present' - the National Theatre did a marvelous job setting Othello in a military base, for example - Almereyda's treatment is clunky and fails to pare down the text for a streamlined, coherent 90 minute film. No matter how you stage it or film it, Ed Harris in a black leather jacket firing off a machine gun while reciting the Bard can never not seem silly to me.
