The film has been criticized on its historical veracity. But even if the factor history was neglected at the expense of a romance plot, 'Elizabeth' remains a gorgeous and truthful movie visually.
A lot of people would have expected a decent documentary on the Virgin queen's reign, but this is a biopic about the woman becoming a queen; the evolution of this character is very interesting: this 20-year-old monarch tooks the reigns of a deprived state and a hostile court.

In my opinion, the genuine definition of a true and brillant actress is her ability to be a real chameleon. During her whole career, Cate Blanchett brought to life singular characters; her portrait of the queen is among one of…

Yesterday I wrote a review of Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar, where I talked about how biopics are instantly met with the mountain of having to condense the life of a historical figure into a two hour film. I posited that they should instead focus on an important part of their life and work it as a character study around that, rather than trying to produce a history lesson of their birth to death. It's a strange coincidence that today I was finally struck with the proper motivation to sit down and watch Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth, because this is the rare biopic that does exactly that.

The film focuses on Queen Elizabeth I of England, but instead of trying to detail…

I was extremely pleasantly surprised by this movie. I only really watched it because it was on television and I wasn’t doing much else, and it turned out to be a very intriguing politically driven historical drama (although not necessarily accurate in any way), which I half expected to be an absolute kissy slop-fest. Perhaps it’s my interest in (a skewed rendition of) history rather than any particular interest in this film specifically, but I really wanted to watch what happened next, following Elizabeth’s decision to “marry” herself to England, and her transformation into something more symbolic than a mere mortal woman.

The gender politics were certainly engrossing, in a period where women were obviously still very much the inferior…

A marvelous film with a marvelous lead performance by Cate Blanchett in the title of Elizabeth, something which would not go unrewarded for her career from then until now and something she should have won the Academy Award for. Whatever people say about the real Elizabeth and her policies is open to many interpretations, but this film cannot deny the grandiose respect and reverence we can be inspired to feel for her in this film's interpretation of her under the direction of Shekhar Kapur.

Instead of embarking on a rendition of the Virgin Queen in an old fashioned manner of a BIO Channel or BBC documentary, Kapur managed to take enormous liberties to tell a story of this woman in…

this is a beautiful film..

the acting is, across the board, wonderful

I can't say the story line was completely historically accurate, but it was well told (it's a movie, not a history class - besides, I'm not a historian)..

I felt the script worked from beginning to end ..
I did not notice any of what I call "holes" in the story line..
(for me, that's when there are obvious plot devices.. which pull me out of the story and can even ruin a film for me.. this was not the case here, though)

the visuals are wonderful - the sets, costumes, makeup, locations, cinematography.. all beautiful

I enjoyed this film the first time I saw it..
and I…

The film has been criticized on its historical veracity. But even if the factor history was neglected at the expense of a romance plot, 'Elizabeth' remains a gorgeous and truthful movie visually.
A lot of people would have expected a decent documentary on the Virgin queen's reign, but this is a biopic about the woman becoming a queen; the evolution of this character is very interesting: this 20-year-old monarch tooks the reigns of a deprived state and a hostile court.

In my opinion, the genuine definition of a true and brillant actress is her ability to be a real chameleon. During her whole career, Cate Blanchett brought to life singular characters; her portrait of the queen is among one of…