Dirk Lester’s review published on Letterboxd :
“You were... The dead have no titles.”
This was not a representative of a genre that typically blows my skirt up, and it doesn’t really draw much in the way of inspiration from the alt takes on the form that have usually impressed me, so I’ve found myself going back to it over and over again over the years to remind myself of just how much I’ve always loved it. Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth wholly lacks both the overtly sterile quality that often plagues star turn period dramas and the burnt frames you find within most of the films that’ve successfully done better by similar material. It even takes a sharp veer away from the faux shakespearean bombast you find in others. Instead it applies a kind of smoke-lace sensuality, conspiracy thriller air and mobbed up mentality to telling the story of the “Virgin Queen’s” coronation and solidification. By which I mean to say the portions of her story that a Michael Corleone or Deep Throat would be comfortable in but that a typical period bio flick would have dispensed with in its first 10 to 15 minutes or so. Both choices make all the difference in the world. There’s genuine menace and fragility to the world and the characters that Kapur conjures up so there’s more than empty calories in the various bits of scenery his wildly able players are set loose to devour. Like I said earlier, I do forget, but it doesn’t take much in the way of its running time for Elizabeth to remind me why it left Blanchett a star.