Tag: Paul Mescal

[EXPRESSO] Hamnet (2025) | The House That Will Built

Chloe Zhao (Nomadland, Eternals) is back for an adaptation of Maggie O’ Farrell book of the same name, a semi-fictionalized retelling of the lives of William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes.

Agnes is a peculiar woman for 16th centhury Stratford: she is skilled with herbs, animals and ointments, she often walks alone in the forest, which makes the town gossip of her as a “witch”. One day she is noticed by Will, a man teaching latin to sons to repay the family’s debt, who falls in love with her, is reciprocated, and despite Will’s family being against it, the two marry, and have three sons: Susanna, Judith, and a boy, Hamnet (which we’re told by text in the prologue was equivalent of “Hamlet” in that day).

Though fate has it in for the young Hamnet, which contracts the plague and dies, further straining the relationship between Agnes and William, the latter which is often away to pursue his budding theathrical career in London…

I think there’s some irony in how the more this tries to work in the famous Shakespeare lines and have this whole familial tragedy serving as what would inspire William Shakespeare to write Hamlet… the more it feels oddly “forced”, almost using the idea as a crutch.

This in a movie where William Shakespeare isn’t actually the protagonist, which is fine, since this IS Agnes’ story by far and large, i get that, but it’s also undeniably way stronger when it’s just being this familial period drama about the loss of a son to illness with some touches of a pastoral magic reality, incarnated by Agnes herself, the “forest witch”.

It just makes the final act a bit wobbly (almost clumsy in how direct it is), but still amounts to Hamnet being a very good film, nonetheless.

[EXPRESSO] Gladiator II (2024) | Caligulas IV: The Untold Story

I have expressed my qualms with this era of Ridley Scott films before, same for the industry doing legacy sequels and so on.

But in this case, i do have some simpathy for Gladiator II, at least from a conceptual standpoint, given the odds stacked against it by default of following up such a revered movie, especially when the finale of the first did had closure. So, regardless of demand or cliffhangers to continue from, here’s a sequel that picks up almost two decades after Maximus’ death, and focuses on its son, Lucius, sent away to avoid being targeted, only to grow up as a Numidian general and being brought back to Rome as a slave, where he collaborates as a gladiator fighting for slave master/coliseum mogul Macrinus, intent of overthrowing the deranged, deprived and tyrannical twin emperors Geta and Caracalla…

It’s not a bad plot, the new characters are actually quite good and interesting, especially Pedro Pascal as general Acacius, and ESPECIALLY Denzel Washington as the devious Macrinus, the latter actually being far more interesting than the protagonist, Lucius, the reluctant heir to Maximus’s legacy (both literally and figuratively), ast Paul Mescal’s character & performance are simply not as memorable as Crowe’s, even when given more dialogues and speeches.

And that’s the issue, as this sequel struggles with the nigh-impossible quest of replicating the magnitude of the original… and doesn’t manage to catch lightning in a bottle twice.

But to be fair, for a movie that we didn’t really quite need, its attempt at recapturing the spirit and spark of the first movie is quite good, just not as good, but the spectacle is there, the plot is intriguing, the sets magnificent, Rome even more decadent, the political intrigue satisfying, the action brutal, and it does entertain quite a lot.