The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)

Nominated for Best Actor, Best Cinematography, and Best Production Design     Oh, hey, it's the Scottish Play.  Does it still count as a curse if it's not a stage production?  These are the questions that keep me up at night.

Macbeth (Denzel Washington) is a loyal subject to King Duncan (Brendan Gleeson) until a trio of witches (Katheryn Hunter) tell him he is prophesied to be the next king.  He immediately writes home to the wife (Frances McDormand) who is over the moon.  But then King Duncan names his son Malcom (Harry Melling) as heir and Macbeth feels cheated.  So he and the missus come up with a plan.  Not a great plan, mind you, but an actionable one.  You can guess from the title (or 11th grade English) how it goes.

This is just a straight production of the play.  No modernizations, no fancy additions, just bare sets and A-list actors.  Like Laurence Olivier and Ingmar Bergman had an extremely pretentious baby.  Your enjoyment will be based on how much you like black and white Shakespeare.  Washington and McDormand are incredible actors and this is like breathing for them.  The real star here is Katheryn Hunter, who played two roles, one of which had three voices.  Shit's wild and she's never even been mentioned in the promos.

It's streaming on AppleTV.