Romeo + Juliet (1996)
Directed by Baz Luhrmann
In this contemporary take on William Shakespeare's classic tragedy, the Montagues and Capulets have moved their ongoing feud to the sweltering suburb of Verona Beach, where Romeo and Juliet fall in love and secretly wed. Though the film is visually modern, the bard's dialogue remains.
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What critics compared Romeo + Juliet to
Not that I'd do away with such funny bits as the homage to Baz Luhrmann's "Romeo + Juliet" or the swan running gag, not to mention the priceless supporting turns by some of the finest actors in the UK (Timothy Dalton, Bill Nighy, Martin Freeman, Steve Coogan, Jim Broadbent, Paddy Considine, etc.).
There's also a most terrible homage to Romeo + Juliet, which might go down as some of the best intentionally bad Shakespeare ever put on film.
Her take on Wuthering Heights feels akin to Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) or The Great Gatsby (2013), in the sense that it's a literary adaptation that’s more concerned with theatricality and spectacle than translating a work of classic literature to the big screen as authentically as possible.
…like Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet.
Fennell programmed a series at the BFI IMAX of titles that inspired her version of Wuthering Heights, including Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter, David Cronenberg’s Crash, Park Chan-Wook’s The Handmaiden, Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, Mervyn LeRoy’s Random Harvest and Catherine Breillat’s Bluebeard.
Valerian (Dane DeHaan) is a government space agent of some kind who acts like Han Solo and dresses like Leonardo DiCaprio in Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet” (hang onto those Hawaiian shirts, apparently they’re gonna come back in style in 700 years).
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Directed by Cathy Yan
Visuals
The costuming is equal parts tacky and sophisticated in a way that’s reminiscent of the styling in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996); Sionis’s impeccably accessorized suits, in particular, are a standout.
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Shaking up Shakespeare is hardly a new idea, and sometimes an unusual treatment of one of the Bard's works can turn out to be both enjoyable and insightful (such as Ian McKellen's transferring of "Richard III" to 1930s England, or Baz Luhrmann's robust "Romeo and Juliet").
Ten years after "Romeo + Juliet" started the trend of making over Shakespeare in today's teenage world ("10 Things I Hate About You" and "O" followed), teen sensation Amanda Bynes (TV's "What I Like About You") takes a crack at one of the Bard's gender bending roles with bland results.
Ever since her phenomenal debut in True Grit, rising star Hailee Steinfeld has been floundering between good (Ten Thousand Saints, Pitch Perfect 2) and bad (Barely Lethal, Romeo and Juliet) projects, but in this film, she delivers her best performance to date, as well as one of the year’s best.
In her juiciest role since the Coen brothers' True Grit (her Juliet in 2013's Romeo and Juliet is better forgotten), Steinfeld is alive to Nadine's rapidly swinging moods and shifting allegiances, but also to her essential goodness.
When Nadine accidentally-on-purpose runs into her crush, Nick, in the tropical fish aisle, the glow is Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet and the soundtrack is Spandau Ballet’s “True,” made famous at the school dance in Sixteen Candles .
I also jotted down William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, Sid & Nancy, and the hail-of-bullets finale of Bonnie and Clyde as spiritual cousins.
Ultimately, the story is so similar, yet the visuals so different, that it feels like you're watching Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, or any other example in theater or film where a story was kept the same, but put in a very different visual setting.
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Combined with Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet , 10 Things I Hate About You makes the bard fun and accessible by giving the story a modern spin.
It's another update of Shakespeare for the MTV generation (whoever the hell they are) and although not as stylized and brilliant as its predecessor, Romeo + Juliet, it still manages to succeed with a charming sense of clumsy cuteness.
In fact, that scene recalls some of the early, terrible scenes in Romeo + Juliet, which makes this film’s structural resemblance to that one all the more obvious.
Some will thrill to Luhrmann tarting up, in the vein of his Romeo + Juliet , F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary masterwork; others will consider the film gauche sacrilege, especially in gratuitous 3D that seems determined to turn a great American novel—black and white and read all over—into a colorful pop-up book (coupled with a Jay-Z produced hip-pop soundtrack).
Because the notion of Hollywood has spread far beyond its Los Angeles borders, it is fitting that the latest adaptation should be made in Australia by Baz Luhrmann, whose riotous esteem for old movies informed his Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!
In 1996, the director's take on William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet similarly blew up the text, attempting to revitalise it for a new generation of teenagers and restate it in a contemporary idiom - but all that film's broad, stylish experimentation, even when it failed, was still attempting in some way to explicate Romeo & Juliet.
Stylistically an extension of Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!, Baz Luhrmann has taken everything to the extreme in bringing this latest take on F. Scott Fitzgerald's jazzy classic to life on the big screen.
Everything in a Baz Luhrmann production — Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge!, Australia — feels like he’s doing it for the first time and that it’s amazing.
That's Luhrmann, who also made the inspired "Strictly Ballroom" and "Romeo + Juliet."
But Moulin Rouge! is so conceptually self-assured that it works as well here as I think it ever has, for this was not Luhrmann's first time at something like this; the film is the third in a loosely-defined "Red Curtain Trilogy", in which the director uses conscious artifice to separate us out from the reality of the film, and then uses a specific gimmick to draw us back in at a heightened level - mechanically deconstructed dancing in Strictly Ballroom , distractingly modern-dress Shakespeare in William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet , and unexpected reconfigurations of familiar songs in this, by far the most successful and sustained of the three.
Director Baz Luhrmann (Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet) sets out to dazzle with this stunning musical, and he accomplishes just that.
This musical drama represents the fruit of four years' labour for director Baz Luhrmann and brings what he calls his "Red Curtain" trilogy to a suitably colourful and theatrical close after the success of Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet.
Viewers are likely either to love or hate the movie's excesses, much as was the case with Luhrmann's oft-discussed 1996 production, Romeo + Juliet (the one starring a pre-Titanic Leonardo DiCaprio and a pre-Mod Squad Claire Danes).
Director and co-screenwriter Baz Luhrmann, who exposed his fearless love of romantic excess in Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet, here surrenders utterly to the ecstatic imperative.