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Joel Coen’s noirish take on the Scottish play, now on Apple TV+, is up against Shakespeare screen classics from luminaries including Kurosawa, Olivier and Baz LuhrmannWith Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth and Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story remake both hitting cinemas last month, the long list of Shakespeare adaptations on film – direct, loosely inspired or otherwise – grew a little longer still. Yet despite a solid shared foundation, most Shakespeare on film is as easily forgotten as any old am-dram production: films with a vision to match that language and storytelling are rare and special.The Tragedy of Macbeth, which landed on Apple TV+ this week, certainly has a vision, with its bare modernist design and high-contrast monochrome cinematography, though Coen’s rendering of the play itself is muted and overly composed. In the ranks of movie Macbeths, it lacks the visceral fury of Roman Polanski’s 1971 version (Amazon) or even Australian director Justin Kurzel’s recent, Michael Fassbender-starring adaptation (2015; BFI Player), which divided critics with its slash-happy approach to the text but enthralled me with its blood-and-grime vigour. Continue reading...