MACBETH (Cert. 15)

Director: Justin Kurzel

Screenwriters: Jacob Koskoff, Michael Lesslie & Todd Louiso

Stars: Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Paddy Considine, David Thewlis

Rating: * * * * (out of 5)

Maybe it’s some residue from theatrical superstitions about “the Scottish play” never to be named aloud, but film versions of Macbeth appear far more sporadically than fellow Shakespearean heavyweights, Hamlet, Othello or Romeo and Juliet. This relative absence of potentially the Bard’s most mystical and visceral tragedy is a shame; but also an opportunity, as taken by Orson Welles in 1952 and Roman Polanski in 1971, to make a generation-defining interpretation. Read more