joined the director’s guild this year. figured i’m in s.a.g. i’m a blackgrrl on a budget. i may as well get as much bang for my buck as i possibly can. i’m doing the math, so i figure with the price of a ticket hovering somewhere around $11.50 or so in the city these days, i’ve got to see every movie they’re showing this year with my friend to make it worth my while. i couldn’t sit through 2 1/2 hours of “into the wild”—i’m sure it’s glorious—but i did see the latest richard gere flick, whose name escapes me.
my friend knows the drill. we show up, we stand in line, we get in, we grab good seats, if we can. no smoking, no food, no drink. seriously, not even water or gum. it’s worth it, to see first run movies before anyone else does.
enter “elizabeth: the golden age” with surprise! everybody’s favorite british manly man clive owen as sir walter raleigh. i got so lost in how lush this movie is, how it told the story visually, how the costumes were so overwhelmingly beautiful at times, how the lighting set the mood at every turn. every frame, so sumptuous and bursting with the feel of it all. just beautiful.
that being said—elizabeth herself is flawed and human and alive, so full of fear and intelligence and beauty that it took my breath away. the first “elizabeth” made blanchett a star. this one will probably get her an Oscar. she gave a great performance and totally commanded the screen in all the right ways.
i can’t say wonderful things for the storyline, which wasn’t meaty enough for me but it told the story that it wanted to tell, so i went with it. it didn’t get into the specifics, just the historical highlights as we glimpsed some personal moments. it was worth it, to see blanchett’s performance, to see those costumes, the whole set up. hey—this is what i do. this is the business i’m in. i have to see these movies.
lovely, lovely turn for samantha morton as the queen of scots. her tenderness in the end at her beheading was sweetness and light.
1 comment:
I saw that movie in Tuscaloosa and thought it was awful. I liked the first one but this crap was stale and totally lazy. They relied too much on the costumes and sets. Hired good actors but provided zero direction, leaving these folks to flounder in their fancy clothes like amateur high school thespians.
I agree with you about Samantha Morton. She was excellent but we didn't get enough of her. A smarter move would have been for the filmmakers to make the movie more about Mary Queen of Scots with Blanchett and that whole English crew as support.
I think the excellent HBO series took the wind out of this movie too. Helen Mirren kicked ass big time. I love Blanchett but she looks like a mere poser after that.
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