Best Movie Ever Made

Rating: 10/10 (2 October 2005)

I watch a lot of movies.
For about 40 years, I ranked Spartacus as the best ever made. Literate script, brilliant acting and a story that transcended age and time. How can you go wrong with a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo, direction by Stanley Kubrick and a cast that included Charles Laughton, Lawrence Olivier, Jean Simmons and Peter Ustinov? (Forget the fact that this was also the best work of Kirk Douglas - an underestimated actor - and Tony Curtis.) Then came Shakespeare In Love.
There is, quite simply, no better movie ever made. For one thing, it has a truly perfect script. It is a Shakespeare play, within a Shakespeare play. All of the ingredients are there. Mistaken identities. Men playing women (and a woman playing a man!) A doomed romance. A tortured artist. Sex, love, and rock and roll. Pick your metaphor. Shakespeare in Love has it.
The only problem this movie has, (and the only reason it isn't on IMDb's top ten) is that you have to actually have read and seen a little Shakespeare to appreciate it. This leaves out about 90% of the movie-going public, who can't even manage to shut up in the theatre, much less read a book occasionally.
Too bad for them.