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Something wicked this way comes to theaters on Christmas Day: Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth.”. The latest interpretation of Shakespeare’s 1606 Scottish play stars Oscar-winners Denzel Washington as Macbeth, a brave general who hears a prophecy from a trio of witches that he will become king, and Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth, the general’s ambitious wife, who goads him into killing the King.

It’s the first film the Oscar-winning Coen has done without his brother Ethan. Coen directed his wife McDormand (they married in 1984) to the first of her three Oscars with 1996’s “Fargo.’ Could this film bag her a 4th?

Even though the play is considered “cursed” that hasn’t stopped directors and actors from tackling the powerful tragedy. The last screen version starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard and directed by Justin Kurzel was released in 2015. Reviews were generally good; the box office wasn’t.

If you’re not a fan of classic cinema, you may not recognize his name. However, in addition to becoming a renowned Oscar-nominated character actor with one of the industry’s most distinctive voices, Claude Rains also taught the craft to some of cinema’s most legendary actors.

Born on November 10, 1899 in London, the future actor who would become known for his elegance and quiet authority had very humble beginnings. His father was a stage actor, and the family lived in poverty, with Rains being one of only three children out of twelve to not die from poverty-related issues. He had a heavy cockney accent and a stutter, and dropped out of school after second grade to earn money for the family. Growing up around the theater, he was soon performing in plays, starting at the age of ten. In 1913, he came to America to find work in the New York theaters,...

If you’re not a fan of classic cinema, you may not recognize his name. However, in addition to becoming a renowned Oscar-nominated character actor with one of the industry’s most distinctive voices, Claude Rains also taught the craft to some of cinema’s most legendary actors.

Born on November 10, 1899 in London, the future actor who would become known for his elegance and quiet authority had very humble beginnings. His father was a stage actor, and the family lived in poverty, with Rains being one of only three children out of twelve to not die from poverty-related issues. He had a heavy cockney accent and a stutter, and dropped out of school after second grade to earn money for the family. Growing up around the theater, he was soon performing in plays, starting at the age of ten. In 1913, he came to America to find work in the New York theaters,...

A film of the opening minutes of Herbert Beerbohm Tree's production of The Tempest was made in 1905. But there was no cinematic follow-up until after the second world war, when the play inspired a western (William Wellman's Yellow Sky) and a remarkable sci-fi yarn (Forbidden Planet), neither using Shakespeare's text. Then came Paul Mazursky's likable The Tempest (John Cassavetes as a self-exiled New York architect), which also dispensed with the text, and Derek Jarman's homoerotic version, which uses Shakespeare's words and turns the masque into a cabaret featuring Elisabeth Welch singing "Stormy Weather" with a chorus of prancing matelots. Peter Greenaway's postmodernist Prospero's Books had the 85-year-old John Gielgud (fulfilling a dream of playing Prospero on screen) speaking the lines of all the characters.

A decade ago, Julie Taymor made a well-acted, at times breathtakingly inventive film of Titus Andronicus that modulated from the ancient...