Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

At least that's what the German distributor would like you to believe that is. What it is though, is a Shakespeare piece thrown into the modern world, but with the same dialogue you'll find in his books. So some words may seem inappropriate considering the time it plays, but that's up to the viewer to decide if he or she will fall for that.The actors are decent actually and they know their Shakespeare. But that might not help the viewer actually enjoying this. It does seem amateurish at times too. And again not the actors fault. Having said that, I'm not sure "real" dialogue would have changed my perspective on the movie overall. The drama is there (it was in the book), but the delivery script and shooting wise lacks a lot ...

The film idea itself is quite good, the idea of mixing a novel context with the modern times is quite interesting.The cast and acting are good, the first scenes of the film kind of hook you to keep on watching, but afterwards is just hard to follow, watch and understand. The film has a great idea but fells like the film lacks of execution and direction. To start; linking the stories and characters is really hard (try to use paper an pen otherwise you are lost). But probably the worst part of the movie and the reason is so hard to follow and understand is the speeches the cast has to go trough. I get the idea of making a contemporary film based on a Shakespeare novel from the 1600, but is the year 2015, and this kind of speech is to elaborated, complex and not very well suited for today's audience (unless the film is targeted to highly literate people). A novel such as Cymbeline requires time and re-reading to understand, a film should better work on the idea of Cymbeline and focus less on follow step by step the novel speech.Not the best movie example (nor my favorite), but Romeo and Juliet (1996) had some of this novel way of speaking, but understandable. Cymbeline (2015) is all the time that dense, complex and confusing way of narration from the 1600's.The best part of the movie, in my opinion, were the soundtracks, but not only the ones that appear on the credits (only 5 songs), rather the song from the beginning, for example. Couldn't find the artist of those songs, but my congrats to the artist, really good music selection.

"On her left breast, a mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops I' the bottom of a cowslip."It's been over 14 years since Director Michael Almereyda and Ethan Hawke collaborated together in the modern day adaptation of William Shakespeare's classical play, Hamlet. The film was warmly received by critics despite not being the first time that a Shakespeare play was adapted to modern times without changing the original dialogue (Baz Luhrmann did the same with Romeo + Juliet in 1996). Once again Almereyda decides to leave the dialogue untouched and change the setting to modern times for the adaptation of Cymbeline. The King (Ed Harris) of a biker gangster group known as Britain is upset that his daughter, Imogen (Dakota Johnson) has fallen in love with his protégé, Posthumous (Penn Badgley), who she secretly married. The two have sworn eternal love to each other, but the King's second wife, the Queen (Milla Jovovich), has other plans for Imogen. She wants her to marry his son, Cloten (Anton Yeltsin) so they banish Posthumous from their group. Meanwhile the bikers have decided to stop paying tribute to the Roman Police Department and a war is about to breakout between the two groups. Posthumous has fled to his friend's house where he ends up meeting Iachimo (Ethan Hawke) and tells him all about his lover's chastity. Iachimo makes a bet with him claiming that he can seduce her and prove that she's not as pure as he believes her to be. He meets Imogen and is unsuccessful in his approach, but Iachimo fools Posthumous into thinking he did sleep with his lover and that is where the plot begins to take several unexpected twists.If the short synopsis of this film felt a bit convoluted, it's because the film actually has a lot going on in the opening minutes where it's trying to introduce the main characters in a very rushed way. The dialogue doesn't help either if you're not familiar with Shakespeare's play because the delivery is extremely fast and new characters keep on coming from all over the place. It's strange that I'm complaining about how fast everything comes at you, because the pacing does get quite tedious and I was thankful the film only runs a bit past the 95 minute mark. But that doesn't mean that the adaptation isn't a mess because it's all over the place. One of the reasons why this adaptation didn't work for me is that the tragicomedy plays out as pure tragedy here and the comedy element is missing from the film. There was no time to get to know any of the characters or their true intentions and it seemed the entire purpose of this film was being able to adapt the play in a modern setting without touching the dialogue. Something that Whedon accomplished much better in Much Ado About Nothing because he focused on the comedy more than on the action. It's funny that I say this because I wasn't even a fan of Whedon's adaptation although I recognized its artistic value, but here there's nothing that worked for me.Shakespeare's plays might be timeless, but that doesn't mean that all of them can be adapted to film. Cymbeline seems to be one of those plays that don't translate well to the big screen due to the convoluted plot. The performances in this film aren't bad, and I like most of the actors here, but the problem for me was that the adaptation didn't work at all. Not even John Leguizamo can redeem the film despite how well he's played Shakespearean characters in the past (Romeo + Juliet). Ed Harris and Ethan Hawke are both extremely talented actors, but there was nothing they could do to engage me with the film. I love Shakespeare's plays and despite never having read this one, I still could see some of his trademarks in the characters and writing, but unfortunately I didn't care for them in this adaptation. http://estebueno10.blogspot.com/

to keep it simple.....a pile of pretentious crap,trying to be deep and meaningful....misses the mark by a mile.I need ten lines to review this dog of a film what can I say????????The first line says it all..................how can you say more? It wants to be something it ain't.. Why not waste a few hours of your life...... What was Edd Harris thinking of when he took this pile of *()$££*** It is hard to fill 2 lines about this pic let alone 10. I'm at a loss to understand why you need 10 lines of text to review a dog of a film. Do me a favour and let me know if you have watched it and disagree(or agree) on my opinion.