Baz Luhrmann’s gloriously over the top modern day adaptation of Shakespeare’s greatest romantic tragedy, reimagined the feuding Montague and Capulets as rival street gangs in Veracruz. With Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes as the star-crossed lovers and a soundtrack featuring Garbage and The Cardigans, it remains one of the liveliest takes on the classic ever made.
There was far more to the 1990s than Kurt Cobain, Brit Pop and Oasis. Indie cinema boomed and smart movie makers took on the classics, the decade seeing a run of original, outrageous and brilliantly subversive adaptations of William Shakespeare’s plays, and films inspired by his works. Think Romeo at a rave, Miranda in Ibiza, Ophelia on prozac, Hamlet hanging loose, Barditry in a beanie hats, and Shakespeare as a slacker in a plaid shirt and converse and the action coming out of Silverlake rather than Stratford Upon Avon...
