Coriolanus (2011)

Adaptation of the lesser known Shakespeare play about the rise, fall, and quest for revenge of the 5th century BC Roman leader Gaius Marcius Coriolanus. This movie is done in the style of such other Shakespeare film adaptions as Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet and Julie Taymor's Titus, where the setting is amorphously contemporized (Coriolanus is evocative of 1990's Bosnia) but the original Shakespearian language is kept, with Brian Cox and Vanessa Redgrave particularly good with the dialogue. The film stars Ralph Fiennes as Coriolanus, this is also his directorial debut and he acquits himself quite well at it. Jessica Chastain and Gerard Butler also appear in this, and the latters presence begs the question of just how much the venn diagrams for Shakespeare fans and Gerard Butler fans overlaps. This is a good movie, I thought the adaption worked well, you can follow events pretty easily which is sometimes a little difficult to do with Shakespeare, especially when they use the original dialogue. I also thought that it helped my viewing that I wasn't familiar with this story, and its a pretty good story, I'd be curious to see another adaption. ***1/2