Beautiful to look at, but laughably bad twists to the history, along with painfully melodramatic realizations of those made up bits make this film a painful experience.

joined the director’s guild this year. figured i’m in s.a.g. i’m a blackgrrl on a budget. i may as well get as much bang for my buck as i possibly can. i’m doing the math, so i figure with the price of a ticket hovering somewhere around $11.50 or so in the city these days, i’ve got to see every movie they’re showing this year with my friend to make it worth my while. i couldn’t sit through 2 1/2 hours of “into the wild” - i’m sure it’s glorious - but i did see the latest richard gere flick, whose name escapes me.

my friend knows the drill. we show up, we stand in line, we get in, we grab good seats, if we can. no smoking, no food, no drink. seriously, not even water or gum. it’s worth it, to see first run movies before anyone else does.

enter “elizabeth: the golden age” with surprise! everybody’s favorite british manly man clive owen as sir walter raleigh. i got so lost in how lush this movie is, how it told the story visually, how the costumes were so overwhelmingly beautiful at times, how the lighting set the mood at every turn. every frame, so sumptuous and bursting with the feel of it all. just beautiful.

that being said—elizabeth herself is flawed and human and alive, so full of fear and intelligence and beauty that it took my breath away. the first “elizabeth” made blanchett a star. this one will probably get her an Oscar. she gave a great performance and totally commanded the screen in all the right ways.

i can’t say wonderful things for the storyline, which wasn’t meaty enough for me but it told the story that it wanted to tell, so i went with it. it didn’t get into the specifics, just the historical highlights as we glimpsed some personal moments. it was worth it, to see blanchett’s performance, to see those costumes, the whole set up. hey—this is what i do. this is the business i’m in. i have to see these movies.

lovely, lovely turn for samantha morton as the queen of scots. her tenderness in the end at her beheading was sweetness and light.