Cebalord Very best movie i ever watch

AboveDeepBuggy Some things I liked some I did not.

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

TheLittleSongbird I have loved Shakespeare since reading Twelfth Night in my sixth year at primary school. And I admire most of the actors here, most notably Derek Jacobi and John Gielgud. This performance of Richard II is just wonderful. The production values are very good if not as good as the dialogue and performances. The sets do convince you of the time and place at least, and the costumes do have a sense of regality to them. Shakespeare's dialogue is brilliant, both poetic and forceful.And the story of loyalty and betrayal as well as rebellion and politics is always compelling and delivered and staged with utter conviction. All the performances are superb, delivering their lines gracefully and intelligently with a good deal of intensity when needed. In particular Derek Jacobi, his performance is a masterclass in abject humiliation that later replaces Richard's kingly pride complete with a regal demeanour and a sense of human thought. Jon Finch is a handsome yet appropriately dark and brooding Bolingbroke and Charles Gray and Wendy Hiller give equally adept performances, but it was John Gielgud that gave the best supporting performance, his This is England...speech is chillingly moving in how elegiac the dialogue and delivery was.Overall, the brilliant performances especially were what made this Richard II so great. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Ross This has been one of my favourite Shakespeare plays ever since I studied it at school so it's a joy to own at last the Beeb's Shakespeare Collection on DVD.Through that school study I've always felt an interest in this king and some sympathy for his dilemmas. A king with such flaws and yet such cunning is so much more interesting beside any tough warrior king who goes about fighting aka his more famous and in the past revered namesake Richard I. And surely we can all feel for his love for his wife, and her despair as he is forced in tears to send her away to safety outside England. So it was a joy to see this amazing performance by Jacobi, confirming all my memories of this play as one of the best of Shakespeare. Whilst Jacobi dominated as the electrifying personality Richard, the rest of the cast are also so very good. Being sympathetic to Richard (as I feel Shakespeare was), I always loathed unartistic Bolingbroke and this actor's excellent performance in this version was very satisfyingly hate-able! I am looking forward to seeing how the Beeb deal with his reign as King when he discovers that being King isn't as easy as he'd thought. I could also happily despise York for the chancer he was, keeping on the winning side, so excellently portrayed by Charles Gray in a performance equalling Jacobi's in quality. My one very slight disappointment was in Gielgud's great patriotic speech, This England. We all had to learn this by heart at school as part of the study, and it's still my most favourite Shakespeare speech. It's not easy for any actor, however amazing, to do it just as I want to hear it. So I don't blame Gielgud at all for not grabbing me with his version, how could I blame such a great actor! I just wanted it done a little differently to satisfy my own ideas of how it should be.I noted when reading up the other comments, a remark that some people had criticised the Beeb's sometimes stark settings. But Shakespeare's plays were performed on a virtually bare stage! The Beeb's versions are positively crammed with scenery and atmosphere which Shakespeare's actors had to create just by their personalities and performance. I didn't see anything stark in the settings in this play. It's a tragedy. You don't expect it to be in a jolly sunlit field!

didi-5 BBC Shakespeare's history cycle ran right the way from this play, 'Richard II', through to 'Richard III', by way of Henries IV, V, and VI.A neglected play, entirely in verse, and often thought superficial and unlikely to stand up to study (rarely taught in schools, for example), 'Richard II' is nevertheless one of Shakespeare's most engrossing and beautiful plays. It has passages of text that have gone down into theatre legend, not least John O'Gaunt's 'Methinks I am a prophet new inspired'.In casting this production surpassed itself. Derek Jacobi brings Richard a soul and a spirit, whether he is playing him as vain and selfish in the early scenes, or broken and discouraged post-deposition. It is a tricky role which he performs extremely well. Opposing him as the future Henry IV is Jon Finch, who also left us a memorable film Macbeth a few years earlier, an actor of considerable range who seems to have worked little in recent years. Here he is a perfect foil to the spoilt Richard.In support, John Gielgud gives a mighty performance as Gaunt, while the likes of Charles Gray, Wendy Hiller, and Mary Morris, bring life to other, more minor roles. The sets are not expensive or, backdrops at least, that convincing, but the play and text is strong enough for that not to matter.A highly recommended version of a play rarely filmed or performed, and a good scene setter for the rest of the History Plays.

tonstant viewer Richard II is the setup for the cycle of history plays, and as such devotes much time to explication. So it can be a little dry compared with some other Shakespeare, and so it is here.The cast is almost uniformly excellent. Jon Finch is a sturdy Bolingbroke, and Sir John Gielgud is memorable, speaking John of Gaunt's "This England" speech as if no one had ever spoken it before.Charles Gray, usually a "damn-the-torpedos" scene stealer, here defers magnificently to Dame Wendy Hiller. When the two plead on their knees simultaneously for and against a royal pardon of their son, they teeter sublimely on the razor's edge of urgent melodrama and marital farce - an exquisite and very difficult moment.The problem for me is a very intelligent, much praised performer who fails in the title role. Derek Jacobi often makes wise choices as he prepares and analyzes the text. Then he commits the actor's unpardonable sin of monitoring his own performance while delivering it. He winds up admiring his own work while doing it, which in serious drama is disgusting.It is also a truism among actors that either the actor cries or the audience cries, but never both. Unfortunately Mr. Jacobi cries so much there's no reason for us to join in; he sheds enough tears for all of us, and we just sit and stare.The other odd thing about Mr. Jacobi's delivery is his total lack of velocity. It doesn't matter whether he speaks quickly or slowly, loudly or softly, there's no movement, no snap, no impetus, no forward motion. Everything emerges from a thick, suet-y, pudding-like stillness, and he never actually manages to get from point A to point B - compare with Gielgud's performance in the same play, where the older man has lost his long breath, but manages to gallop nonetheless.The BBC videos of Shakespeare's comedies and romances have much more engaging production design than the histories, but what we see here is perfectly adequate, if not arresting.The all-important pacing is uneven, except for the scene of the handing over of the crown, which grinds to a dead halt. This last should have been tightened in the editing. Overall, tedium is not avoided, it's embraced.So if you really think that Derek Jacobi is a great Shakespearian actor, don't mind me, just plunge right in without hesitation.I personally would rather get my hands on a copy of the Shakespeare Recording Society version from the 1960's, starring Sir John Gielgud as Richard II with Michael Hordern, Leo McKern and Keith Michell; this is available on audio cassette in the UK and on CD nowhere, and that's a scandal HarperCollins should address.