Queen of Queens
We were prepared for badness—I was hoping for camp—but not for immobility. Elizabeth: The Golden Age plays like a series of fashion spreads (Why is she wearing a mosquitero?):
the whole budget went to the costumes, so England sends one ship to battle the Spanish Armada (Did they really suicide-bomb the armada?!).
Cate Blanchett works hard—she doesn’t just chew the scenery, Tina says, she swallows it whole—but in many scenes she comes on like an angry drag queen. Clive Owen plays Sir Walter Raleigh, and we’re not convinced he’s from that era. Ted was right: when Raleigh throws his cape over a puddle for the queen to walk on, the cape is so cruddy, it would’ve been more sanitary to step on the puddle. (Remember the first movie, where the Vatican sends an assassin to kill Elizabeth, and he moves through the shadows like a testosterone bullet, hooded and cloaked, with crazy eyes? Haay, first sighting of Daniel Craig. He’ll survive The Golden Compass.) Tina notes that all the Spanish characters are dark and greasy and look like dwarves in Velasquez paintings. Cate delivers a speech before battle to what appears to be a row of cardboard standees. A waste of a first-rate cast that includes Geoffrey Rush as Walsingham and Samantha Morton as Mary Queen of Scots.
Before The Golden Age we saw the trailer of Ridley Scott’s American Gangster, and Russell Crowe looks like he’s ready to play. . .the late Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter. It’s the hair. I think there should be a separate Oscar for hair design, because the hair really makes a difference, right, Chus? Note how every review of the Coen Brothers’ No Country For Old Men mentions Javier Bardem’s hair.
This I have to see: There Will Be Blood, the new film by Paul Thomas Anderson, starring Daniel Day-Lewis. The best-reviewed movies of 2007 have titles with an Old Testament ring: No Country For Old Men (Yeats, but also OT), The Valley of Elah, There Will Be Blood. . .
December 13th, 2007 at 08:42
I’m looking forward to your impressions about No Country For Old Men…especially the ending.
December 13th, 2007 at 22:05
Heard ‘Into the Wild’ is pretty good too. These are great movies. I just doubt if they’ll be shown here. Thank God for Quiapo!
December 17th, 2007 at 02:19
omg
talaga, ganyan ang elizabeth, im so looking forward pa nga to the 2nd movie…well
that was already available sa isang site like 2 mos na, but i opt ot watch it nga sa big screen
hay, but nonetheless, i will still watch it…..
quiapo?, makati cinema square!!!!bangon!
i hope walang nagbabasa na taga omb!