It screws the viewer's courage to the sticking-place, forcing them to look into corners of themselves they would rather not peer.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 16, 2016

A terrifying, seemingly irreversible dirge, gloomy and rainy and blood-soaked.

| Apr 30, 2016

Director Justin Kurzel seems to have set out to answer the question, "What if the supremely ambitious Thane of Glamis (played here by Michael Fassbender) was a druggie?"

| Original Score: 0/5 | Dec 11, 2015

This screen adaptation of the famous Scottish play is very Scottish, very bloody and very clever, if inconsistently so.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 11, 2015

"MacBeth" is serious business indeed, and in the hands of director Justin Kurzel, it becomes bloody serious business. Very bloody serious business.

| Original Score: B | Dec 11, 2015

All blood and ice, a stirring, unflinching retelling of Shakespeare's tale of a Scottish thane, his ambitious wife and a terrible deed that haunts them, leaving their hands forever stained.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 10, 2015

It stars Michael Fassbender as the murderous general of infamy and Marion Cotillard as his complicit wife. Two of the world's finest actors, they make a magnetic pair.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 10, 2015

The fundamental problem with this "Macbeth" is that it insists on reducing the mystery of motivation to the pop psychology of a magazine article.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 10, 2015

Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard contribute stiff, actorly performances, and director Justin Kurzel seems more concerned with getting the right squishy sound for a dagger thrust to the intestines than with any kind of thematic thrust.

| Dec 10, 2015

However skillful, Fassbender and Cotillard perform as if nervous about being one of those ham actors who "struts and frets his hour upon the stage." Or two hours on the screen.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 10, 2015

Kurzel and cinematographer Adam Arkapaw's vision is one of pummeling beauty. You could drop out the sound and be content with their red- and blue-bathed sceneries of mayhem, the white fog that obscures a blighted land.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 10, 2015

Why do we need another "Macbeth?" There's a two-part answer: A) Michael Fassbender. B) Marion Cotillard.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 10, 2015

If Macbeth comes off at times like a Classics Illustrated comic-book adaptation (there is one, from 1955), it can also be quite moving, quite troubling, haunting, even.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 10, 2015

"Macbeth" takes liberties with the particulars of the Shakespeare play, but is fascinatingly true to its spirit.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 10, 2015

"Macbeth" possesses a terrible beauty, evoking fear, sadness, awe and confusion. Presented with the aesthetic of a dark comic book, it's also a mournful masterpiece ...

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 10, 2015

The antique weapons, ancient mud-splattered costumes and faces so caked with dirt that the expressions are often obliterated make this a visceral Macbeth, if far from flawless in other areas.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 10, 2015

At once ferociously medieval and achingly contemporary, this is the Macbeth our haunted, fearful times require.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 4, 2015

Marion Cotillard's Lady Macbeth, however, is a triumph. She seems transfixed by her own capacity for evil, and her mad scene is one of the most unhistrionic, and therefore spookiest, ever filmed.

| Original Score: B | Dec 4, 2015

While the scale of the battles and the scenery is enormous and awe-inspiring, some of the more famous moments and lines arrive in understated fashion in intimate spaces.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 4, 2015

Mr. Fassbender gives you a reason to see this "Macbeth," although the writing isn't bad, either.

| Dec 3, 2015