Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Sammy-Jo Cervantes There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

sumairaa The William Shakespeare play about a easily influenced and conniving man, who mercilessly killed many due to his greed for power, was well played out in this rendition of the original play. The film was quite accurate in comparison to the original play. The plot events were played out well, all the discussions, even the shortest ones, were played out perfectly. The film was impactful, and the characters were easily remembered when re-reading the play. The characters in this film were accurate, and realistic. A personal flaw I found in this movie was the length of the film, a lot of things were dragged on, and other parts went too fast, which resulted in me missing the important bits of information. But other then that, the film was actually quite interesting. (P.S. this review is for a class project, my teacher is kind of cruel, so just ignore this review altogether pls n thnx)

camicardenasp Polanski addresses the transposition by trying to maintain a high degree of credibility and squeezes us into a general state of the world sieved into battle and a victory situation. It encloses the presentation of deep characters on their way through a landscape of rude climate that seems to condemn in cold to all living being. As a human individuality the determined pathos leads to guilt and injustice, regardless of the legitimacy that may be elaborated, as in the case of Lady Macbeth, all this through the contradiction that transcends reality and transposes and sees through that other it is itself but far from the normal thought carried by the drives.

Robert J. Maxwell Not badly done at all. Peter Finch is a handsome young MacBeth, always responsible except when he's nuts. And Francesca Annis is a toothsome redhead. "Back in the day," this would have been shot under in Hollywood sunshine, full of scintillating seas and glorious gorse. But the director places the story where it belongs, in a Scotland of lowering skies, one that is dark, windswept, rainy, and almost barren.It's always interesting to see how movie directors handle the soliloquies. The conventions of the stage rarely work. Polanski gives the actors interior monologues. Lots of emotional close ups, not befitting a stage. It all works pretty well.MacBeth is a likable play, party because it's masterfully done -- the unlikely rhymes still raise my eyebrows -- but also because it's short and because the narrative is clear. The Bard could write some clunkers. I wonder if anyone can really sit through "Love's Labour's Lost" and truthfully claim he enjoyed it. No problem with MacBeth though, and nothing obscure about what's going on. If "Hamlet" was about a man who could not make up his mind, "MacBeth" is about a man whose reach exceeded his grasp -- and who went to hell for it. MacBeth has his head lopped off -- maybe twice, according to the play. WS needed a good copy editor.Oh, how we recognize that motive, the lust for power. It shows up in our technology. All of the Volkswagon Beetles of 1960 have been replaced by SUVs too massive to fit into the garage. A .38 special is infra dig. We want .44 magnums. Nor is the play politically correct in any way. It takes Lady MacBeth one second to decide that the King has to be slaughtered so her husband can rule. Okay, so the current king has just promoted MacBeth and given him a title. But "Thane of Cawdor," my foot. It's the KING who has the power.Of course the king's isn't the only death. The wily Lady MacBeth has framed the king's guards and MacBeth quickly slaughters them before they can be questioned. MacBeth is now King of Scotland but "uneasy lies the head that wears the crown," as someone once said. There is another threat. MacBeth's friend and rival -- Banquo, and his child must go too. The kid gets away but Banquo is assassinated in the woods. Banquo gets even later by showing up as a decomposing corpse at MacBeth's castle, Dunsinane, and spoiling a festive dinner.That famous scene is handled well enough although Polanksi brings nothing special to it, nor to the rest of the story for that matter. It's not distinctively Polanski's in any way, no "Chinatown" or "Rosemary's Baby." Visually, the most impressive scene is MacBeth's second visit to the Sinister Sisters in pursuit of some vision of the future. They slip him some psychedelic drug and things go round and round, to a point that surpasseth understanding -- mine anyway.Fortunately, Polanski works a little nudity into the play. When Lady Macbeth is wandering around in her sleep she's not wearing any clothes, a nice artistic touch. Too bad she talks to herself and spills the beans about her crimes in front of two gawking attendants. MacDuff's little boy is naked too and so are the Weird Sisters but they can be disregarded. One's testosterone level dwindles at the sight of those flabby, toothless, blind, cackling old women.MacBeth has still another impediment. There's MacDuff, next in line for the throne, now in exile. By this time, with so much blood having been shed, MacBeth's nobility and courtiers are beginning to wise up. They joke about MacBeth behind his back and wish him gone. But he's not gone yet. Now a tyrannical ruler, he must commit more and more murders to protect himself. MacDuff may be gone for the moment, but that doesn't stop MacBeth's lackeys from murdering MacDuff's wife and young son, while raping the maids and pillaging the house. That's a pretty rotten thing to do, when you get right down to it. Certainly MacDuff thinks so when he gets wind of it. He and his army set off in search of justice and revenge. MacDuff lays on. Boy, does he lay on.Polanski has a habit -- unfortunate in my opinion -- of tacking an unhappy ending on all of his movies, even a comedy like "The Fearless Vampire Killers." Well, MacBeth is already a tragedy so he doesn't have to tack an unhappy ending on it. Instead, he makes the entire story more hopeless. In the play, as I remember, Ross is only a minor figure, a messenger. Here, Ross (John Stride) is a buddy and supporter of MacBeth. He murders for MacBeth. But when towards the end, when he sniffs which way the wind is blowing, he deserts the king and hastens to inform MacDuff that the king has slaughtered MacDuff's family and servants. He's a sneaky character and he celebrates MacDuff's coronation with the same fake enthusiasm he did for MacBeth's. It is, as someone said, throwing a perfume on the violet. It's a double downer. Not only has MacBeth, the confused protagonist, given up the ghost, but now his successor, MacDuff has a mole in his midst. All that notwithstanding, it's a gripping tale made into a good movie.

revival05 While watching his frighteningly dark and nihilistic take on Shakespeare's Macbeth, I think of just what a fascinating story the life of Roman Polanski is, and has become. It is with the most pitch black sense of irony I realize that the film he made, in part one must assume, to deal with his own tragedy today mirrors his future lawsuit - towards the end of the movie it was scarily easy to draw the connection line between Polanski himself and Macbeth who, despite his frustration and angst, cannot escape the consequences of his crime.If justice truly is blind - and Polanski certainly doesn't express any other point of view in this film - then anyone with blood on his hands will get what's coming to him. I still have a hard time though, to feel any greater feeling of proud anger towards a 76 year old man who got his wife gutted while she was eight months pregnant, now facing a 30 year old case that nobody cares about anymore, and that nobody involved with wants to have any more to do with.That becomes even clearer when you see Macbeth. You can only imagine Polanski's mindset when he decided to make this movie. It seems as if he was inclined on not making anything false or half-hearted, he drew a sharp line with co-writer Kenneth Tynan and seems to have held the course all throughout production. The spectator tone, of distant coldness, is never broken. Never does it seems like Polanski interferes with the action that takes place. Never do the characters plea to the audience, never is there a message being presented. It all lacks rhyme and reason, the tragedy takes place before our eyes but it only "occurs". A child is murdered, a good man gets an axe in the back, witches cackle, Macbeth himself is so afraid, his experience of fear is vastly greater than any of his other - yet none of these things are dealt with in any different fashion. Many have tried to make Macbeth into a human story - where Macbeth's follies and illusions of grandeur do assure his fall, but are also what makes him human. Maybe it is what makes Polanski's Macbeth human too. This word "human" though, comes off as meaningless and Polanski's portrayal of humanity as a whole, seems to be that of an endless chain of commitment and detachment, promise and betrayal, and murder upon murder upon murder. This is by far one of the most pessimistic and depressive films I have ever seen. The most disturbing part of it is probably towards the end where you watch killings and unspectacular executions and you as a viewer experience nothing. Whereas many modern moral tales or anti-war movies - like Requiem for a Dream or American History X - use excessive violence to shock and stir an emotional catharsis, there is a detached numbness to the excessive violence in Macbeth that makes is truly and utterly disturbing. In a way, watching the movie feels like having a lobotomy.Naturally, much of this comes from the murder of Sharon Tate, which echoes throughout the entire movie, but while there are many obvious details making the movie so hauntingly personal, there is also a lot in the movie that simply tells Shakespeare's tragedy in an even more depressing light. After all, despite the many attempts to make sense and sensibility out of the Macbeth story, the overall message of the story seems to be that life is a cold and meaningless affair, you live until you die, nothing matters and surrounded by beautiful landscapes men kill and kill again. It seems like Polanski is simply doing the play as literal as possible. Who's to say Shakespeare himself wasn't in the same state as Polanski when he wrote the play? Who's to say Polanski's Macbeth isn't the most accurate?