Greekguy

Carlo Carlei's fine rendition of a tale so well known that it presents a challenge in simply justifying its retelling caught me by surprise. I did not expect the emotional impact that it had on me. This production, so beautifully shot and with a screenplay by Julian Fellowes that highlights Shakespeare's original passages and then carefully and with craftsmanship bridges between them where cinematic action requires a change of pace, conveyed to me the weight of fate and the scale of personal tragedy more effectively than earlier film versions I have seen. Baz Luhrmann's wonderful 1996 version gave me a far greater visual thrill, and an explosion of possibilities that all pointed to the continued relevance of the play's central concepts, but it was in this version that I felt the full sense of loss, the denial of all that could have been, that comes with the film's denouement.

Adapting William Shakespeare is fraught with peril - conventional wisdom says "Why mess with such artistry?". However, simply putting Shakespeare on film is already an adaptation; he wrote specifically for live performance. Updating the setting is adapting. Adding a soundtrack is adapting. Translating is adapting. (Some might argue having women playing women's roles is adapting, too, and it's interesting to note in the case of this play, as with many Shakespeare plays, that the 'original' was itself an adaptation.) What critics really rail about, however, is any interference with the text. In this case, Fellowes' screenplay included much of the original text, along with some sympathetic additions. Characters did not change allegiance or overall behavior, major plot points were not lost, and Shakespeare's intent was not blunted or redirected.

Regarding comments by others on casting, I thought both leads were excellent; Hailee Steinfeld captured the entirety of her role, including first love's effects, in a wholly believable manner. Douglas Booth was rash, obsessive and brave, just as he was supposed to be. A few churlish comments were made about the number of kisses - would teenagers in love not kiss, no matter the period? The play as written by Shakespeare includes kisses between them on at least two occasions.

The story is a tragedy about love as much as it is a love story, and this film gets that just right. Oh, and Paul Giamatti and Lesley Manville were great.

The pairing of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee is always worth the price of admission, or, in this case, the even hour and a half that it takes to tell the tale. "Nothing But the Night" isn't amazing, but it's a solid little eerie number, made the same year that Christopher Lee also starred in the far better but not entirely dissimilar "Wicker Man". It's said that the author of the story on which the film was based wasn't happy with the casting of Diana Dors, but the actress certainly works hard for her money here, crawling around on the grass and through the scrub so much that she very nearly does chew the scenery.

The lead child actress, Gwyneth Strong, who would go on to have a long career on British television, is effective, and Michael Gambon pops up in an early role as a level-headed police inspector, but it's more the mood than the cast that holds sway here.

It's a creepy little film (helped in this by the choice to base nearly all of its soundtrack on the tune "Ten Green Bottles Hanging on the Wall", which is being sung by characters in the film's opening moments) and, although it's nothing really special, the final plot twist is wholly unexpected. What's more, you get to spend time with Dracula and Van Helsing in civvies, as it were, and that's good enough for me. I would, however, be fascinated to hear how the flick ended up with that title - the idea of night, or nighttime, doesn't seem to be particularly significant in the story that is told.

There's something inherently nice about Taika Waititi's vision of the world; even when he's dealing with superheroes and world-ending calamities as he did in "Thor: Ragnarok", he's more interested in friendship and hope than about villainy. In fact, Waititi's on-screen villainy always seems to have some jocular edge poking out somewhere.

In this wonderful examination of boyhood, the villain, if there is one at all, ends up being simply a flawed, silly man, while the protagonist, Boy, earns our affection slowly and steadily as he discovers those flaws.

This film is a classic coming-of-age film: a boy on the cusp of adolescence learns about love, dreams and disappointment, all while keeping his spirit intact. On the other hand, it's also a film about not coming-of-age, and how that can happen to some of us, without it being a tragedy.

The tone is playful, the performances are great and the world that's created is absolutely believable, if perhaps just a little too nice. But then again, it's Waititi's world, so what should we expect?