Anonymous

Because of the ingenious screenplay by John Orloff, precise direction by Roland Emmerich and the casting of memorable British actors, you can walk into the theater as a blank slate, follow and enjoy the story, and leave convinced - if of nothing else - that Shakespeare was a figure of compelling interest.

Anonymous starts admirably quickly, but Emmerich repeatedly forgets to look over his shoulder to see if his audience is keeping track of which stringy-haired Calvin Klein model is which.

Ifans is convincingly world-weary as the earl who prefers writing sonnets to the pageantry of court life. Anonymous aims to be epic but is closer to stately soap opera.

So if you don't mind, I'll just go back to believing that someone named Shakespeare (whoever he was) wrote Shakespeare's works. And I'll just go back to regarding them with awe.

Emmerich's movie is sporadically enjoyable trash with better performances than it has any right to: Hogg's verminous villain leaves a trail of cold, oozing hisses.

A curveball from the man who made "2012" and "Independence Day" and probably only a brief respite for the world's major cities.It's more of an interesting curio to a blockbuster career but there's fun to be had here if you look hard enough.

The movie inspired theater critic Judith Newmark to write a sonnet in response.

This is a film that has stayed within my personal top ten since its release. Watching again tonight for what is likely the fifth time... I lost count. Still love it as if it were the first time. NOTE: this is tale of a theory for an alternate history of Shakespeare himself. If your not willing to consider the theory as possible then you will not enjoy it as much. Keep an open mind and you will lose yourself in this wonderful tale. Oh and see how many Shakespearean references you can find in the protagonists life!

Anonymous es una película que lo que quiere es contar la historia del famoso William Shakespeare pero desde un punto menos visto y un tanto más misterioso, y, en general, está película cuenta la historia de una forma interesante, aunque algo fastidiosa. Este largometraje contiene una ambientación y un vestuario impecable y de gran altura, además, la trama de la película se desenvuelve de una forma que logra distribuirse bien a las diferentes situaciones que van ocurriendo en el film., pero, por desgracia, hay algo que le falta a la película, y eso es un entretenimiento más amplio., es decir, de que la película puede resultar en ciertas ocasiones fastidiosa y aburrida., por lo tanto la historia se puede tornar un tanto desalentada, aunque tampoco es para decir que este film se torne lo suficientemente fastidioso para decir que es malo o para dejar de verlo en cualquier parte de la película.

Intrigue, deception and a supposed truth, make this movie surprise, that's the word. Fascinated with spectacular art direction, makeup and wardrobe...

A wonderful looking film with a wonderful cast. But the screenplay--which attempts to jump about in space and time in a Tarantinoesque fashion--never works. And I mean that in almost every possible way. I don't remember a movie in recent memory so devoid of authentic dramatic tension. At points you can almost see Orloff and Emmerich checking off bullet points from their lists of points that the film is trying to demonstrate. Ignoring the Hick versus the Literate Earl debate for the moment, the writer the film really slanders and does a disservice to is Ben Jonson. According to the film Ben Jonson (and Kit Marlowe, Dekker, and Nash--all of Shakespeare's brilliant contemporaries) can't write a syllable that compares to Shakespeare. Certainly untrue as anyone who's read any Elizabethan and Jacobean poetry or drama knows. In fact, there are so many good dramatists and poets during Shakespeare's day the question shouldn't be Why is Shakespeare so great? Rather, it should be how did such an age produce and nurture so many good poets and playwrights? Finally, the figure of Oxford is meant to be somewhat tragic but the film's silly conceits and stereotypes run roughshod over our sympathy for him The films trots out the same hackneyed ideas about writers that have been around since the beginning of drama: the great writer suffers in isolation, is unappreciated by all around him, and must be willing to sacrifice all to his art. Uh-huh. And Mozart wrote his symphonies on a billiard table in the midst of a billiard match. But a fine film from a technical angle...

This is one of the dumbest, ignorant, confusing messes I have ever witnessed. The idea that Shakespeare didn't write his plays in the first place is idiotic, false and insulting, and the misuse of historical characters is a slap in the face to anyone who has studied the smallest fraction of it. The characters are wrong, the events never happened, and the placement of the Globe and Tower are nowhere near where they would have been circa 1600. The only saving grace in this film is Rhys Ifans performance and the neat cinematography, but that is far outweighed by this work of fiction.