Coriolanus (2011)

  Your tolerance of this movie will greatly depend on your love of Shakespeare.  There's a reason this one doesn't get performed a lot.  Yeesh.

Caius Martius (Ralph Fiennes) wins the soubriquet Coriolanus after the battle of Corioles.  He fought his mortal enemy Tullus Aufidius (Gerard Butler) there and, while neither man managed to kill the other, Martius and Rome carried the day.  He comes home a hero and is nominated for Consul but a couple of Tribunes (James Nesbitt and Paul Jesson) think that he's too proud a man to be given such a position.  They inflame the people to deny the Consulship and move to have Coriolanus banished from the city.  This displeases our hero and he immediately goes to Antium to seek out Aufidius.  Together, they will destroy Rome and no one, not his friend Senator Menenius (Brian Cox), not his wife (Jessica Chastain), and not his mother (Vanessa Redgrave), will stand in the way of revenge.

This is Ralph Fiennes' first directorial effort and it's a good one.  I may not have liked the play but I can recognize that it was done well.  Hopefully, next time he'll pick something a little more accessible and a little less bombastic.  I do think the sound editor should have been shot in the foot, though.  It would go from extremely quiet, when I had to turn the volume all the way up on the TV, to machine gun fire and explosion.  Very annoying.

Also, in happier news, I watched the first season of Copper, a BBC America original.    It's like Gangs of New York meets The Wire.  Everybody in it is dirty and violent and you can't trust any of them as far as you can throw them.  It's awesome.  The second season should be starting here in a couple of weeks.  Of course, I probably won't end up seeing it for another three years but see it I shall.