Macbeth

This is the version of Macbeth they should be playing in schools after studying the play.

Continuing the modern-day theme of making everything gritty, dark and/or stylised this dresses up the Scottish play with smoky slow-mo and gritty battle scenes.

It looks great in parts but OTT in others and it's best to know going in to expect pretentiousness (although being a Shakespeare you should know this already.)

Lots of good and bad here so let's start with the good and Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard (as always) are excellent and awards-worthy.

Fassbender is intense and perfectly captures the desperation and ambition in Macbeth's character stealing every scene. He does have a tendency, as do all the male characters, to slip into gruff-ness which makes the language hard to grasp but chances are you know the story anyway.

Cotillard isn't seen enough but is otherworldly when she is on screen and her "blood on my hands" scene is fantastic, hauntingly done to camera.

The best soliloquy though goes to Macbeth's "tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow" done with Lady Macbeth's dead body in arms which is one of the best bits of cinema you'll see this year.

The big let down with this version, though, is the setting. Traditionally set all in one castle this version instead limits things to some tent-based small villages which just lack the grandeur and tension of previous versions.

The ghosts, witches and scares are there but the big scenes (like the murder of Duncan) just aren't the same in this backdrop.

Overall then, a good version, probably the best, slightly overpraised in the media and certainly not one to see if you've never read the play or have no interest in Shakespeare.

4 stars ****