Movie Reviews

Elizabeth:
I liked this movie, but I don't think everyone will. They didn't take as many liberties with history as they did in the first Cate Blanchett Elizabeth movie (Title: Elizabeth) which was nice, because I managed to resist the temptation to point out all the factual errors.

I'm sure the people with me appreciated it.

It was a very pretty movie. It was like the director thought to himself, "You know. Everyone already knows how the story ends (spoiler: Spain loses) but I have Cate Blanchett, and I have all these amazing costumes, so why not just make everything gorgeous."

Some of my favorite scenes: Elizabeth in a beautiful green dress positioning military units on an enormous map; Elizabeth in armor, delivering the historic speech modern screenwriters would have preferred her to give instead of her actual historic speech; and the Spanish Armada putting out to sea.

For some of the more squeamish among you: there is a scene of a guy getting his tongue cut out, some unpleasant torture scenes and one booty shot.

There's this whole romance sub-plot with Sir Walter Raleigh, because you simply can't make an Elizabeth docu-drama unless she's bravely pining for someone she can't have. It's like a Hollywood law or something.

The part that struck me, just because it was so accurate but not in the way the plot intends, is when Elizabeth discovers that one of her handmaidens has married without her consent and completely flips out.

That happened a couple of times during her reign. That was the one scene where I thought, "Here's the Elizabeth I've read and studied about. This is Henry VIII's daughter."


I also saw Dave in Real Life. Which was very cute. A great family movie that is all about relationships and love and values and all that warm and fuzzy stuff.

I just know more about Elizabeth than being a widower/advice columnist with three girls looking for love in middle age, so I can't really go into as much detail here.

It was pretty dang hilarious though.