Curator Watchlist
The Tempest
A visually ambitious Shakespeare adaptation with a strong central performance, but the film is widely hampered by uneven tone, dated CGI, and a stagebound quality that keeps the magic from fully translating to screen.
Curator Watchlist
A visually ambitious Shakespeare adaptation with a strong central performance, but the film is widely hampered by uneven tone, dated CGI, and a stagebound quality that keeps the magic from fully translating to screen.
Where to watch: Buy
Sat · 1h 51m
Director: Julie Taymor
Starring: Helen Mirren, Felicity Jones, Reeve Carney
An adaptation of the play by William Shakespeare. Prospera (a female version of Shakespeare's Prospero) is the usurped ruler of Milan who has been banished to a mysterious island with her daughter. Using her magical powers, she draws her enemies to the island to exact her revenge.
Julie Taymor
Helen Mirren, Felicity Jones, Reeve Carney
A visually ambitious Shakespeare adaptation with a strong central performance, but the film is widely hampered by uneven tone, dated CGI, and a stagebound quality that keeps the magic from fully translating to screen.
Julie Taymor approaches The Tempest with real visual imagination, turning Shakespeare’s late play into something ornate, strange, and often self-consciously theatrical. Helen Mirren gives the film a commanding center as Prospera, and the island setting has a vivid, dreamlike quality that suggests a more daring adaptation than the final result fully becomes.
The problem is that the film never quite finds the right balance between stage and screen. Its digital effects are frequently distracting, and the production can feel like a filmed performance rather than a cinema-first reinvention. For viewers who appreciate Shakespeare on its own terms, there is enough craft and personality to admire, but the movie’s limitations are hard to ignore.
As a curiosity, it’s more interesting than its reputation suggests, especially for those drawn to bold formal experiments and literary prestige projects with a strange, imperfect edge. As a satisfying fantasy film, though, it falls short, and the rough execution overwhelms the occasional flashes of beauty and invention.
🌻mayra🌻 (0.5★) · 321 likes
if shakespeare saw this he would go back in time to kill himself before he wrote the tempest so that this shit wouldn't ever be filmed
Abriana (0.5★) · 176 likes
Fun fact: this movie was made with a budget of class="h-100 apple-font-system"0 and a gift card to Jo-Ann Fabrics.
theswedishman (0.5★) · 128 likes
This film is the worst of the worst, this is the stuff you find clogged half way down a public toilet, the sort of caca that gets stuck in your memory, a horror that will brand itself on your eyes. This actual shit shows what the worst film could be, it does not even deserve half a star. This should be illegal to watch and destroyed in the fires of hell. NEVER WATCH THIS FILM, I AM NOT JOKING, DO NOT WATCH IT.
KokieLiz (1.5★) · 119 likes
I don’t need to see Ariel’s butt cheeks every time he flies away
Ben Kelly (2.5★) · 63 likes
It's too bad Saoirse Ronan quit acting before she could play the titular role of The Tempest
A far more radical and visually inventive Shakespeare adaptation that embraces theatricality instead of fighting it.
Another stylized literary adaptation that turns stage language into stark, cinematic imagery.
Epic betrayal, exile, and revenge rendered with monumental visual control and tragic grandeur.
A sharp, dialogue-driven power struggle about family, succession, and emotional warfare.
A playful Shakespeare adaptation with a similarly heightened, magical sensibility.
Lavish fantasy imagery and a storybook tone that prioritizes visual invention over realism.
A surreal, fairy-tale-inflected fantasy with a strong sense of menace and transformation.
An ornate, stylized period piece that values composition, wit, and artifice.
A literary adaptation with gender fluidity, historical sweep, and a playful relationship to identity.
Baroque visual design and operatic emotions in a highly theatrical cinematic package.
Mystery and supernatural unease filtered through an atmospheric, dreamlike visual style.
A gentle, folkloric fantasy with island atmosphere and a strong sense of myth.
Shakespeare adaptation, revenge, magic, banishment, family conflict, female power, island isolation, theatricality
shakespeare, literary adaptation, fantasy drama, revenge, magic realism, theatrical, island setting, family drama, prestige adaptation, uneven cgi