Well I saw the new Elizabeth movie last nightand just thought I would give a review since it’s a relatively doper-ish movie.
Overall I would say that the director, editor, cinematographer, and soundtrack composer did their very best to ignore some very good acting and a decent script about a rather fascinating and impressive section of history and actors. The end effect being that after you are done watching the movie, it’s like you’d just watched a really long trailer by some ham-handed advertising studio for a much better movie that actually cared about the history and letting the actors really get roaring. Just unfortunately you know that no such movie is in the making and you’re stuck with the somewhat cheesy, two hour long trailer for it.
To go over the list of the various sins of each of the guilty parties:
Directing / The Script: While each of the actors gave wonderful performances, they were wonderful performances of poorly chosen reactions. In every other scene Elizabeth is either crying and distraught or sitting absolutely still telling everyone how dispassionate she is, or switching immediately from one state to the other. It would have been rather nice to have seen some middle ground between wise and cool, and distraught and screaming. And similar for all the other actors, they each get one monotonous emotion that they play throughout the movie, regardless of what is happening about them. Raleigh, in one scene, happens upon his wife being screamed at by the Queen. Does he get angry or scared or any other emotion? No of course not, since Sir Raleigh only has the part of a suave, confident do-gooder. And so he walks up with the same swagger as he had in any other scene to seduce the Queen away from his wife with a smile–while the Queen is still physically hitting his wife. Yeesh.
Editing: So as to show the evilness of Spain and all the other bad guys in the film, and sometimes just because they needed such a scene or otherwise just felt in the mood for it, every ten or fifteen minutes or so we’re suddenly presented with a scene of some random people doing something dastardly. The context is rarely linked to anything, we’ll just suddenly be presented with some random group of people killing some poor sod and not much more, and then back to the story. 
Whyyyy? I ask you, whyyyy?
Cinematography: This is the films weakest point. While any one scene of the movie might be visually impressive, after the fourth time that the camera does a full circle around Elizabeth for two minutes straight, you really start wishing that they would just get on with it. It’s like, since they failed to win the Best Costume and Best Cinematography with the first Elizabeth movie that they only cared about topping whatever costumery and cinamatography they had in the original, but at the expense of it making any sense whatsoever for the flow of the movie. Indeed, while they do take the two mintes in each scene to do a full circle of the actors with the camera you do sit there thinking how impressive all the detail is on the costumes are–I’d never realised that they had chicken wire to hold up the frills around women’s necks at the time of Elizabeth. But NOW I intimately know this fact for I was treated to a circling close up of Elizabeth’s neck at least two times (and yes I mean her neck–who cares about the main character’s face while she is talking…)
Soundtrack: Bombastic. Bombastic. Bombastic. The amount of melodrama pumped into the score was just silly. Listening to something remniscent of the climax of the most emotional scene ever put on film for nothing more glamorous than doing a circle of Queen Elizabeth’s neck in her red dress is just stupid. When the film finally came to scenes that could be said to have been worthy of music like that you were just shaking your head and remaining firmly planted against the uplifting melody. Bleh.
For the sake of the quality of the acting (if not the rationality of the things they were made to act) and the simple interestingness of the history (bastardized as it may be), I’d still give the movie 2 stars, for it isn’t awful. But that’s a high 2, with a desire to slap the production crew on the head thrown in.
