Henry V (1989)
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
In 1415, in the midst of the Hundred Years' War, the young King Henry V of England embarks on the conquest of France.
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What critics compared Henry V to
Antoine Fuqua can be accused of derivative filmmaking with his adventure tome that gives more than a passing nod to such films a Mel Gibson’s “Braveheart” and Kenneth Branagh’s “Henry V.” The blue-stained skin of the Woad warriors and Arthur’s St. Crispin’s Day-style speech are lifted from those previous epic stories, although, historically, Fuqua and company may be more accurate in their depictions of the time.
JILL: It's the Henry V speech.
Living up to the hype surrounding his role in The King, Timothée Chalamet gives a star-making turn as a youthful, tormented Henry V—transforming from a louche booze artist with father issues into a heroic warrior who despises war.
The King arrives on screen 30 years after Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V. Branagh’s film addresses the tenor of the Margaret Thatcher era by presenting a grungy, harsh reality, but it manages to build to peaks of regal heroism anyway.
Likewise, forget expecting anything akin to Kenneth Branagh's airless, but much lauded 1989 re-enactment of Henry V .
The King is the muddiest and bloodiest take yet on Henry V.
Honour is at the centre of this take on Henry IV Parts I & II and Henry V with (Ronan's Little Women and Lady Bird co-star) Timothée Chalamet playing the wastrel Prince Henry, who grudgingly ascends to the throne and then has to figure out whether his most dangerous enemies are across the Channel or much closer to home.
In the best sequence of the new Disney Plus film Togo , Willem Dafoe belts an abridged version of the St. Crispin’s Day Speech from William Shakespeare’s Henry V (“We few, we happy few”) to the team of dogs pulling his sled as they hurtle across the ice.
Kenneth Branagh, hired for our memories of Henry V, glowers at the horizon line, but there's little payoff.
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Unlike previous Thor directors Kenneth Branagh and Alan Taylor, who’d both had at least some experience directing action sequences (in Henry V and on Game Of Thrones , respectively), Waititi is known exclusively for small, gentle comedies, often in collaboration with Flight Of The Conchords’ Jemaine Clement.
Once at the asylum, the girls come under the vicious humiliation of Sister Bridget, played in a brilliant bit of casting by Geraldine McEwan, the sweet, cheeky woman from Kenneth Branagh's Henry V and Peter Chan's The Love Letter.
THE 13TH WARRIOR aspires to be a cross-between Branagh's Henry V, a terrific battlefield epic, and the mediocre Braveheart.
Except for a shot of Buddy reading a comic book about Thor— Branagh directed Marvel’s 2011 film version—there is no reference to the A-lister he’d become from 1989’s “Henry V” to his upcoming reprise as Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in “Death On the Nile.”
When the filmmaker and actor’s name pops up, you likely – and fortunately, for his sake – recall the man’s respected string of Shakespeare adaptations: Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, and his gargantuan Hamlet.
In 1990 at the age of 30, Kenneth Branagh scored two surprise Oscar nominations for Best Actor and Director for his filmmaking feature debut, "Henry V," which made him the golden boy of that moment.
In its headlong energy and mixture of the intimate and grand, we can see how Buddy would later grow up to be the director who made Shakespeare adaptations like “Henry V,” where you can feel the mud and steel, but also the poetry.
Belfast is a tremendously personal film from Kenneth Branagh, who used to reliably make awards-worthy Shakespeare adaptations such as Henry V , Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet , and plenty more.
Having won this year’s TIFF audience award, writer/director Kenneth Branagh’s ("Henry V," "All Is True") paean to ‘those who stayed’ and ‘those who left’ is heavily favored in Oscar’s Best Picture race, but while the film, beautifully shot in black and white (by cinematographer Haris Zambarloukoshaving), has some charming moments, Branagh’s failure to establish his point of view as belonging solely to Buddy renders too many aspects of his film inauthentic.
He’s also one of the best actor-directors working today, and his wearing of two hats on “Murder on the Orient Express” recalls his exuberant work on “Henry V” (1989) and “Hamlet” (1996), as well as on the nifty little crime film that was his sophomore effort, “Dead Again” (1991).
Here’s an eye-popping reminder that the director of “Henry V” and “Thor” knows how to have fun with an Agatha Christie whodunit.
Over the course of his 28-year directing career, Kenneth Branagh has adapted everything from literary classics (Shakespeare’s “Henry V”) to comicbook pulp (putting a distinctive Dutch-angle slant on Marvel’s “Thor”).
Having proven his worth at adapting some of Shakespeare’s finest work with such features as Henry V (1989), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), and Hamlet (1996), it stands to reason that Kenneth Branagh would align himself with the catalogue of another respected writer such as Agatha Christie, and as both director and lead actor (screen writing duties fall to Logan scribe Michael Green) he wholly embraces the story’s aesthetic both thematically and characteristically.
Now comes director/star Kenneth Branagh (Henry V, Thor) and screenwriter Michael Green (Logan), the duo joining forces to bring Christie’s Poirot back to the big screen in a star-studded adaptation that, if it doesn’t rival Lumet’s 1974 version, at the very least equals it.
Director/star Kenneth Branagh began his filmmaking career with bracing Shakespearean adaptations like "Henry V," then continued to surprise with his fun Marvel movie "Thor" and a very worthwhile Disney live adaptation of its own "Cinderella."
From Henry V (which earned him Oscar nods for best actor and for best director) to Hamlet to Much ado about Nothing, there’s a great prestige present in much of his filmography (the same can be said for Thor , Branagh’s venture into the Marvel universe).
Branagh has a checkered career as a filmmaker, with sparkling Shakespeare adaptations like Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing resting alongside stolid big-budget movies like Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and Thor, but he demonstrates a firm understanding of his task with Cinderella.
Kenneth Branagh, who directs the upcoming adaptation of Cinderella, made his name as a director with his adaptations of Shakespeare — most notably, Henry V and Hamlet; films that garnered seven Academy Award nominations between them.
The music by Patrick Doyle, whose collaboration with Branagh goes back to their mutual feature film debut Henry V (1989), is elegant and substantive without being intrusive, and the cinematography by Haris Zambarloukos, who previously shot Sleuth (2007) and Thor for Branagh, is appropriately sumptuous, but without losing some of the primal earthiness that keeps the fairy tale grounded.
Branagh, who made his name as a prodigy dedicated to Shakespeare, has had a strange and often unsatisfactory filmmaking career – you could argue that his best feature remains his debut, 1989's Henry V .
I have long admired his directing skills, since his dazzling breakthrough with “Henry V.” “Cinderella” should figure prominently on his impressive resume, especially if it earns the year-end awards, that I believe it will.
Branagh has never been a stranger to bombast, whether he was doing Shakespeare (think of the bellowing portent of Henry V , or the careening cameras and swirling orchestral crescendos of Much Ado About Nothing ) or making a period horror adaptation ( Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is so visually histrionic it makes Bram Stoker’s Dracula look like Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket ).
After a black-and-white prologue set in 1914 during World War I – which suggests that Branagh may want to try his hand at a full-on battle epic again (he did it in his first feature, HENRY V) – we’re in color, at a nightclub in 1937 London.
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Lowery has cited Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev and Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V as inspirations; the film also hints at John Boorman’s Arthurian extravaganza Excalibur and Guillermo del Toro’s sylvan fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth.
The most recent high, in the English-speaking world, covered most of the 1990s, when the successes of Kenneth Branagh's Henry V in 1989 and Merchant-Ivory's Howards End in 1992 (itself a delayed capitalisation on the same team's A Room with a View , released in 1986) proved enough to trigger a mania for well-heeled adaptations and variations of the things you read in high school, or a least in a freshman year college English class.