Hamlet (2000)

This is a contemporary take on the Bard's most famous revenge play about the Danish Prince, this time around played by Ethan Hawk.  It also stars Kyle MacLachlanby, Liev Schreiber, Julia Stiles, Bill Murphy, Steve Zahn, and Sam Shepard. It's always clever to see how one takes such an old work and updates it for new audiences.  Here we have a very cinematic experience with most of the story intact.   I especially loved how Hamlet is a lover of videography and crafts a film to confront his uncle instead of using a group of traveling thespians.  Unfortunately most of these actors do struggle with the language, but I think that's because they're trying to make it sound like contemporary speech.  Besides this obvious weakness, I must say I liked this adaptation very much.  It just proves how universal a storyteller Shakespeare was.  Grade: B+