This film adaptation of a critically acclaimed stage production of Shakespeare's historical drama stars Ian McKellen in the title role. The setting is a comic-book vision of 1930s London: part art deco, part Third Reich, part industrial-age rust and rot. The play's force is turned into a synthetic high by art directors and storyboard sketchers, all of whom have a field day condensing the material into disposable pop imagery. Richard III is a fun film, more than anything, so infatuated with its own monstrous stitchery that even the most awkward casting (Annette Bening and Robert Downey Jr) seems a part of the ridiculous design. McKellen is the best thing about the movie, his mesmerising portrayal of freakish despotism and poisoned desire a thing to behold. -Tom Keogh.

As an entry in the Shakespeare-redone-as-teen-movie stakes, Hamlet has a less obvious hook than most. Though the gloomy prince-played by Ethan Hawke as a 20-something clinging to student status because he can't cope with the grown-up world of power politics-is a youth identification figure, the political background, translated into a big business concern with Old Hamlet as the CEO of the Denmark Corporation, is beyond the gangland simplicities of Romeo and Juliet or the high school pecking order of 10 Things I Hate About You. Michael Almereyda, after two interesting horror movies (Nadja and The Eternal), offers what he calls "a rough draft" of the play, and casts very fine players in a severely abbreviated text: the micro-presence of some (Jeffrey Wright as the grave-digger) suggests a longer version was prepared and slimmed down to this quite tight picture. The actors manage a middle ground between the original and the new context: Sam Shepard's Ghost lingers silently beyond his stage appearances to emphasise the textual theme that Old Hamlet was a sinning villain who deserves his limbo; Kyle MacLachlan's Claudius is smooth, but conscience-struck in the back of his limo after viewing Hamlet's cut-up underground film allegorising the murder; Diane Venora's Gertrude is a radical reading that plays well, drinking the poison on purpose to save her son and at once innocent of her husband's murder but genuinely committed to Claudius's rule; Bill Murray, Liev Schrieber and Julia Stiles make a good unit as Polonius, Laertes and Ophelia respectively, though the text-pruning (and especially Stiles's vulnerable mad child) turns them into victims of a selfish Hamlet rather than culpable collaborators with the something rotten in Denmark. Hawke's prince is the sketchiest reading but his knitted hat and messy student workstation make sense and he is a credible post-adolescent ditherer. This Hamlet, who has to be convinced of his uncle's guilt and that he ought to take revenge, never quite comes round to the brutal eye-for-an-eye logic of his father. The settings are steely hotel ballrooms (the coronation is translated to a press conference) and other inventively co-opted New York locales: Ophelia drowns in a huge lobby fountain, her mad scene is at a reception in the Guggenheim, the "to be or not to be" speech is delivered in the aisles of Blockbuster Video (as Hamlet prowls the Action section). Deliberately imperfect but far more interesting (and exciting) than the recent Mel Gibson and Kenneth Branagh embalmings of the play, this is a rare and welcome Hamlet that sets out to be an addition to the debate rather than a definitive reading. -Kim Newman.

Looking for a benchmark in movie acting? Breakthrough performances don't come much more electrifying than Marlon Brando's animalistic turn as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Sweaty, brutish, mumbling, yet with the balanced grace of a prize-fighter, Brando storms through the role-a role he had originated in the Broadway production of Tennessee Williams's celebrated play. Stanley and his wife, Stella (as in Brando's oft-mimicked line, "Hey, Stellaaaaaa!"), are the earthy couple in New Orleans's French Quarter whose lives are upended by the arrival of Stella's sister, Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh). Blanche, a disturbed, lyrical, faded Southern belle, is immediately drawn into a battle of wills with Stanley, beautifully captured in the differing styles of the two actors. This extraordinarily fine adaptation won acting Oscars for Leigh, Kim Hunter (as Stella) and Karl Malden (as Blanche's clueless suitor), but not for Brando. Although it had already been considerably cleaned up from the daringly adult stage play, director Elia Kazan was forced to trim a few of the franker scenes he had shot. In 1993, Streetcar was re-released in a "director's cut" that restored these moments, deepening a film that had already secured its place as an essential American work. -Robert Horton.

Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was unique in its day for casting kids in the play's pivotal roles of, well, kids. Seventeen-year-old Leonard Whiting and 15-year-old Olivia Hussey play the titular pair, the Bard's star-crossed lovers who defy a running feud between their families in order to be together in love. Typically played on stage and in previous film productions by adult actors, the innocent look and rawness of Whiting and Hussey resonated at the time with a burgeoning youth movement from San Francisco to Prague. The tragic romance at the centre of the story also clicked with anti-authority sentiments, but even without that, Zeffirelli scores points by validating the ideals and passions of strong-willed adolescents. Less successful are scenes requiring the actors to have a fuller grasp of the text, though the best thing going remains the unambiguous duel between Romeo and Tybalt (Michael York). Lavishly photographed by Pasquale de Santis on location in Italy, this Romeo and Juliet brought a different tone and dimension to a story that had become tiresome in reverential presentations. -Tom Keogh.

Few actresses have dominated the camera as powerfully as Dorothy Dandridge in Carmen Jones. Her polished beauty plays in irresistible contrast to her title character's leonine sexuality and fluid emotions; a man can't decide from moment to moment if he wants to save her from doom, build her a castle, or never let her out of bed. Of course, that's the problem with the boys in this semi-experimental adaptation of Bizet's opera, Carmen. Straight-arrow Joe (a strapping Harry Belafonte), an obedient corporal on a southern military base during World War II, is all set to go to flight school and marry his hometown sweetie, Cindy Lou (Olga James), when his troublemaking sergeant orders him to accompany Carmen to a civilian court. In short order, Joe is swept up in Carmen's carnal anarchy and her craving for release from lousy options in life. An impulsive act of violence ensures that Joe's future is gone forever, putting Carmen in the difficult position of destroying their relationship to save him. Oscar Hammerstein II took Bizet's music in 1943 and rewrote the book and lyrics. The result is largely a smashing success with a few missteps (the bullfighter in Bizet's piece becomes a heavyweight boxer here, which breaks up a certain grace in the story) and a couple of perfect stretches (the long prelude to Carmen and Joe's first embrace, set on Carmen's hoodoo-ish home turf). Despite the fact that both Dandridge and Belafonte were singers, their vocal performances were dubbed by LeVern Hutcherson and Marilyn Horne. (Yes, it is a little disconcerting to hear another voice coming out of the more familiar Belafonte's mouth. [+]