Review: Elizabeth The Golden Age


[Editor's note] I finally made it to a movie theatre this weekend. I think I've been neglecting going to a movie house because Blockbuster Online has quenched my movie-going urges. Who needs to pay, (what I found out this weekend), $9.50 for a movie when you're getting an endless amount of them for $20. Ten-dollar movies are blasphemous. Anyway, I went to go see Cate Blanchett blow me away as Queen Elizabeth.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age is the follow-up film to 1998's Academy Award-winning Elizabeth. This new film depicts Elizabeth's struggles against Catholic rule, the Mary Queen of Scotts debacle, the attack and destruction of King Phillips' armada, and Sir Walter Raleigh's discovery of the New World. I shouldn't give too much plot away because it's a film still out in theatres.

Cate Blanchett was phenomenal. She is the Katherine Hepburn of our time. She has a way of communicating such raw, unapologetic emotion onscreen that one can't help but be taken with her. She has a control and a screen presence that drowns out many of the other actors. Many, but not all. Geoffrey Rush for one, held is own and then some as Sir Frances Walsingham. Powerful, creepy, and ruthless, Rush delivered a performance worthy of award recognition.

I will admit, however, that I was a little bored for about a third of the time. I'm a big fan of period pieces but this one felt a little stretched. Clive Owen for instance, (who I lust after endlessly) seemed rather pointless in the film. He was put there purely for Hollywood purposes.

Overall, the film was pretty good. The acting was superb. The costumes themselves gave a standout performance. Cate B was the resurrected vision of the Queen. The score by Craig Armstrong and A.R. Rahman (who composed the score for the first Elizabeth) was brilliant. And let's be honest, the story of Queen Elizabeth is one hell of a good tale to tell.

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