1 Feb: "I wear a dress like this!"

Elizabeth (1998)
dir. Shekhar Kapur

CAST
Cate Blanchett (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, 2008)
Geoffrey Rush (Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (voice) , 2010)
Christopher Eccleston (28 Days Later..., 2002)
Joseph Fiennes (Shakespeare in Love, 1998)
Richard Attenborough (Jurassic Park, 1993)
Vincent Cassel (Black Swan, 2010)
James Frain (Where the Heart is, 2009)
Daniel Craig (The Quantum of Solace, 2008)

Whoosh! Long cast list! TWO references to the archives, no less! Someday I hope all the movie names I refer to will be hyperlinked, except Shakespeare in Love, because that sucked.

I chose Elizabeth in honor of finishing The Tudors, but actually I still have two episodes left, and I moved Lizzy up in my netflix queue because ten days without a posting is a bit much. I could upgrade my account to have more than one DVD at a time, but I'm not made of money, and I don't have enough time to be watching all these movies anyway. I wish the "watch instantly" option had better choices.

You guys, I'm not sure this movie was so great. In fact, I wasn't quite sure what it was about, lacking a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end, and I was never quite sure if Lord Robert was a good guy or not. Here is the synopsis, as I gathered:

Bloody Mary is the Queen of England but she's old and ugly and not pregnant and nobody likes her. She's mean to Elizabeth who denies having plotted to overthrow Mary and I guess we, the audience, are meant to take her word for it. And Catholic priests are evil and burnt a friendly-looking lady, but Mary dies of cancer and Lizzy gets to be Queen anyway. In the meantime Liz is entertaining a relationship with one Lord Robert, and I'm sure if he's on the up-and-up, since he's married already and she is the Queen. The ambassadors of France and Spain are pressuring her to marry someone from their respective countries, but the French guy is a cross-dresser and the Spanish guy isn't interested is actually co-habitating. A coup attempt by Lord Norfolk is intended to raise some sort of conflict or drama, but is quickly resolved and Liz decides to marry nobody but paints her face white and acts all dramatic.

I guess I'm supposed to think: Gee, it's tough being a powerful woman and choosing between having a man or having autonomy.

Stop telling me what to feel, Hollywood.