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Capone Ventures Back To THE GOLDEN AGE! Is He Happy To See ELIZABETH Again?!
Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.
I have to confess... I would be shocked to hear anyone give this movie a pass. It’s such a complete disaster that I think it’s pretty much a litmus test of your critical faculties. If you can’t understand why this movie misses the mark completely, then maybe you don’t understand the basics of cinematic grammar and narrative structure, because it’s not a few minor things that are wrong with this film... it’s everything.
I’ll have my own review up later, once I can actually wrap my head around just how to approach the topic, but for now, here’s Capone with a well-reasoned take on it.
Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here. I genuinely struggled to figure out how to start this review. I see so many unwanted and unnecessary sequels every year, that I thought it would be a treat to see one of my favorite films from 10 years ago get some sort of follow-up today. Cate Blanchett returns to play England's Queen Elizabeth I, a role that catapulted her into something resembling stardom. But more importantly, it was our first indication that, as an actress, Blanchett could do anything. Shekhar Kapur's vibrant and thriving direction also heightened the pure joy ELIZABETH gave us in 1998. The absolutely killer cast--including Geoffrey Rush, Joseph Fiennes, Richard Attenborough, John Gielgud, Vincent Cassel, Christopher Eccleston, Fanny Ardant, and Emily Mortimer—didn't hurt either.
So here we are today. Same lead actress, same director, another stellar cast, extravagant costumes and rich color schemes. So what the hell went wrong with ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE, a flimsy film that is in desperate need of a backbone? More soap opera than history lesson, this movie is so bad in every respect that it's difficult to pinpoint exactly where things fall apart. Absolutely nothing works here. The cast seems to know that the words coming out of their mouths are essentially overblown, melodramatic junk that soap opera writers would laugh at. Rush returns as the queen's chief counselor Sir Francis Walsingham, but he doesn't do anything except skulk around looking devious. My latest crush, Abbie Cornish, is on hand as the queen's lady-in-waiting, but we know nothing about her, and she's given nothing to do except act as a plot device for Clive Owen's explorer/pirate Sir Walter Raleigh to fall in love with and make the queen insanely jealous. Owen's work here is perhaps the most disappointing in the entire film. As much as I think the guy can do no wrong, he's embarrassingly wrong for this role.
What's worse, Kapur gives the romance aspect of this film far too much screen time. I may not have mentioned it, but England is on the brink of devastation at the hands of the Spanish Armada and the imprisoned rightful queen, Mary-Queen of Scots (Samantha Morton, yet another great actress utterly wasted here). But the significance of these events pales in comparison to the queen having a hissy fit over Raleigh impregnating her servant girl…because that never happens.
On the rare occasion, I am at a loss for words to tell you how much I enjoy a particular film, but in this case words fail to convey just how colossal a failure THE GOLDEN AGE manages to be. Forget being bored; I eventually became downright pissed off at how this film was slapped together. There's an assassination attempt on Elizabeth that is so stagey and overplayed as to be laughable. It's clear Kapur prefers style over substance, almost opting to make Blanchett look exotic and strange instead of developing her character and the backstories of those around her. A master class could be taught showing just bits of this movie as an example of how not to make a film and how to ruin a perfectly good thing by trying to repeat yourself. Do yourself a favor: If you have any affection for the original ELIZABETH, stay as far away from ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE as you possibly can. For me to say more about this film might give you the undesirable impression that it's actually worth discussing at all.
Capone
So here we are today. Same lead actress, same director, another stellar cast, extravagant costumes and rich color schemes. So what the hell went wrong with ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE, a flimsy film that is in desperate need of a backbone? More soap opera than history lesson, this movie is so bad in every respect that it's difficult to pinpoint exactly where things fall apart. Absolutely nothing works here. The cast seems to know that the words coming out of their mouths are essentially overblown, melodramatic junk that soap opera writers would laugh at. Rush returns as the queen's chief counselor Sir Francis Walsingham, but he doesn't do anything except skulk around looking devious. My latest crush, Abbie Cornish, is on hand as the queen's lady-in-waiting, but we know nothing about her, and she's given nothing to do except act as a plot device for Clive Owen's explorer/pirate Sir Walter Raleigh to fall in love with and make the queen insanely jealous. Owen's work here is perhaps the most disappointing in the entire film. As much as I think the guy can do no wrong, he's embarrassingly wrong for this role.
What's worse, Kapur gives the romance aspect of this film far too much screen time. I may not have mentioned it, but England is on the brink of devastation at the hands of the Spanish Armada and the imprisoned rightful queen, Mary-Queen of Scots (Samantha Morton, yet another great actress utterly wasted here). But the significance of these events pales in comparison to the queen having a hissy fit over Raleigh impregnating her servant girl…because that never happens.
On the rare occasion, I am at a loss for words to tell you how much I enjoy a particular film, but in this case words fail to convey just how colossal a failure THE GOLDEN AGE manages to be. Forget being bored; I eventually became downright pissed off at how this film was slapped together. There's an assassination attempt on Elizabeth that is so stagey and overplayed as to be laughable. It's clear Kapur prefers style over substance, almost opting to make Blanchett look exotic and strange instead of developing her character and the backstories of those around her. A master class could be taught showing just bits of this movie as an example of how not to make a film and how to ruin a perfectly good thing by trying to repeat yourself. Do yourself a favor: If you have any affection for the original ELIZABETH, stay as far away from ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE as you possibly can. For me to say more about this film might give you the undesirable impression that it's actually worth discussing at all.
Capone
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Wait, though. In ten years, somebody will want to reboot this as a franchise, or at the very least, ELIZABETH: YE OLDE BEGINNINGS
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Why am I still semi-interested in seeing this then?
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any movie/tv special about a woman leading/inspiring an army sucks.
And it sucks because it's either historically inaccurate, and/or the woman-lead-army got obliterated. -
Quint is a modern-day gentleman, and Massa grew up in a house with no furniture. Judging from their reviews of this film, that is.
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Have completely different reactions regarding a film. So who do I trust? The smoking Jesus or the gangster?
Moriarty, please clarify with your review. -
I can't wait for the final film so I know how the story ends.
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Drew is correct here.
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If this movie isn't at least a 6 out of 10 count it
as the biggest disappointment of the year (for me) -
who the hell do i believe? one tells me it rocks the other says my time is better spent staring at my own crap in a toilet!
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except for the stupid prebattle speech you see in every epic
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get some back bone and tell them why they're wrong.
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It's still a decent movie. but it was definitely a MAJOR disappointment. two MAJOR complaints:
1) the movie makes a point of setting the scene for the situation between spain and england, but it pretty much just assumes every idiot in the audience knows the deal with mary queen of scots. umm...HELLO! isn't that ass backwards? doesn't everyone in the world read about the spanish armada (the event that catapulted England into Empire), but the deal with Mary is generally relegated to a historical footnote on the war of the roses and then the henry 8 stuff? I mean...GAWD. a little background on mary, please? and then they have this grandiose execution that's supposed to draw all this pathos but who the hell even knows who she is besides having that "weird" accent.
...which brings me to 2) the script was shit. the plot was weak(er than the first). and the film tries to compensate for this by - wait for it - turning up the music really loud during every scene as if by raising the conductor's baton were a magic wand that could suddenly make us think there's tension in the scene. literally pulling people's emotional strings with the musical score is a timeless trick from 5th century tragedy. and it's not as if I was shocked by it. but what it really did was make me painfully aware that I was watching a scene that was "supposed" to be full of tension and pathos, but all I could think was "damn. why is the music so loud?"
also: dude needs to stop with the whiteouts. it was like wathching the five endings of RETURN OF THE KING.
all that said, I still thought it was a decent movie. for having a crap script, the actors gave surprisingly good performances. and aside from the awkward battle scenes, I did enjoy the imagery. -
There were fricken dozens of 'rightful' monarchs of England, so the fact that Elizabeth was on the throne means that she's the most rightful. Hell, she could've made a claim to the French crown if she wanted. And Soylent, yeah, Elizabeth liked her speechifying, and from what I've heard dressed up in armour a bit too. She was kinda manly in that way (by necessity).
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... do you actually know the history behind what happened, Capone? Mary Queen of Scots WASN'T the rightful queen of England. To say so is just a complete and utter falsehood, and if the filmmakers make it seem so, that's wrong. Mary Queen of Scots was the closest blood relative to the Queen (a cousin) who had a link to the Tudor line (she was a Stuart), so she was next in line of succession for the English throne, meaning if Elizabeth died, or was killed, the Scottish Queen would be the English Queen, and Mary was Catholic. Now, if you know your history, England had recently gotten over Elizabeth sister's bloody reign as Queen (hence the name, Bloody Mary... a DIFFERENT Mary) with her Protestant persecutions. Men like Walsingham, who was basically the Queen's spymaster and top diplomat, had everything to lose if the Catholic church came back to England in that they sided with the Protestant Queen over the Pope. So Walsingham trumped up charges against Elizabeth's heir, Mary Queen of Scots, to charge her falsely with treason (how a Scottish Queen, independant of England can be charged with treason is never broached) and have her beheaded to ensure that she would never see the throne. Before she was beheaded, her imprisonment, along with Drake and Raleigh's privateering (piracy) against Spanish ships and ports, gave Phillip II, Elizabeth's brother-in-law, and former Prince-Consort of England (married to Bloody Mary and tried to marry Elizabeth after Mary died, actually, just before Mary died), the King of Spain enough of a reason to invade England. So that takes care of the Spanish Armada, and soon after, Mary Queen of Scots lost her head. When Elizabeth died, Mary's son, the King of Scotland, James VII, became James IV of England, King of the Scotland, England, and Wales, the newly United Britain. He was a Protestant and interestingly, he is the King James of the King James Bible used by Protestants the world over.Capone, don't mess up your history when a history major reads your boards.
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The woman runs a website trying to motivate and aid people with health problems. I seriously doubt that pleasing some fucking asshat on a film site message board is high on her list of priorities. Good God, people like you are why I'm ashamed to admit I even read this fucking site. What in the holy hell does his wife's writing have anything to do with a movie he hated? Have some self-respect you cowardly, misogynistic troglodyte and stop bringing down the tone of the sonofabitch neighborhood.
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I must've really missed something. where was the misogyny in his historical diatribe?
anyway, I still maintain that the movie elided WAY too much plot involving mary queen of scots. way to much to suddenly weave her into the story as a major player (which it did). -
I'll go with Massa since the writing is livelier (no offense Capone).
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This is getting virtually unanimous bad reviews, but I saw it a press screening weeks ago and I really enjoyed it! I'm really confused!!! My only gripe was there was an obvious budget constraint because you got the impression you weren't seeing as many big ship battle shots as you should have been, but what there was looked good.
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I don't believe this can be as bad as Capone states, also with his skewed view on history he was probably hoping for a completely different ending whereby QE1 marries Raleigh and lives happily everafter in Spain!! Also, isn't Capone a Transformers fan?? Probably wasn't enough robots in it.
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Wasn't that in the first movie as well? I don't get it. Everyone seems to think the first movie was great, but they have decided that this one, which apparently is just piling heaping loads of "Let's give them more of what they got last time" and everyone finally realizes how bad it was the first time, without admitting that they had the bad taste to like it first time around. Walter Chaw at Film Freak Central said that the Catholics are treated like the Skeksis from DARK CRYSTAL, which is exactly how they were treated the first time. You do understand that we are currently living under a government of White Anglo Saxon Protestants who distrust any international influence (like Catholicism) that criticizes their international adventures on the basis of human rights, right? So they become villains in propaganda shite like "Elizabeth". I know I'm never going to like Cate Blanchett after this ... TWICE she's gone to the bigoted anti-Catholic propaganda well. Fuck her, and the makers of this crap.
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Everything he says applies to that film. Which is why I wonder at his venom towards this sequel. Surely it's just more of the same? And maybe an unconscious irritation at seeing more of the same is what has hammered home to Capone the actual badness of the first film.
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... there's a historical REASON why the English where scared shitless of the Catholic Church. You talk about human rights, NoDiggity, ever heard of something called the Spanish Inquisition? They were Hitler before Hitler was Hitler. Ever heard of Bloody Mary Tudor, Mary I of England? She killed THOUSANDS of English Protestants in the name of the Pope and the Catholic Church. I'm not saying the reasons that the Anglican Church was made aren't fucked up... they ARE fucked up (just so Henry VIII could stick his dick in more "legitimate" women so he could get a son), but historically, the Cathoilc Church has been one of the biggest Human Rights violators on the PLANET.That's not anti-Catholic, that's historical FACT. And the Catholic Church, with consent of the Pope, DID try to assassinate Elizabeth no less than three times with the idea of placing a Catholic on the throne in her place. First it was Mary of Guise, then it was Mary Queen of Scots, Mary of Guise's daughter.Dude, I know this history cold. I know the history of the Catholic Church COLD. Don't bring your emotional, irrational bullshit in the form of a dull spoon to a gunfight. You sound ignorant and unintelligent. I am having fun logically dissecting your illogic to shreads, though.
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Whatever the Catholic Church might have done in the past, a film made NOW emphasizing the evil of the Catholic Church in the past is targeting the Catholic Church, and Catholics, NOW. Movies don't just fall from heaven, pure in their "historical fact". They pick and choose their historical facts for present agendas.
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I realize you disagree, but was it really necessary to insult the guy who wrote the review yesterday in that opening paragraph?
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It is reprehensible that you'd insult Capone's wife over a freakin' review. How fucking vile can you be? Not enough apparently. I would say that I won't lower myself to your level and be insulting towards you but fuck it, you deserve it, you total cunt.
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Just saw the movie and was very entertained. ****SPOILERS*****
The acting was excellent and the set pieces were very good. Of course the costuming was great, but expected that from the previews. The music was OK too -- Uh, epic scope, 16th century royal court stuff, epic battle. What would one expect? A couple of scenes were iconic. For example, the wide shot of Mary Queen of Scotts crimson death dress as she was about to to get the axe; Elizabeth on the cliffs with the Armada up in flames, to name just a few. We even got a little of ROTK thrown in with the lighting of the signal beacons. Well worth the trip. -
Actually Mary Tudor only burnt around 300 people during her five year reign. This was nothing compared to how many people her father butchered for their faith, whether it was burning Protestants for heresy or disemboweling Catholics for treason. Mary was a strong willed but obstinate character (as were all the Tudors). When she set her mind on reconverting England to Roman Catholicism with the aid of the stake then there was little anyone could do to dissaude her. Oh and she was was barren as well.
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you call it iconic. I call it out of place. first of all, keira knightly did it in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE a year or two ago, and I'm quite certain that was ripping off something else. I will say it looked good in a way that elizabeth on a horse trying to exhort her troops did not (including all those hair extensions all over the place). battle scenes were a joke. can't argue with the costumes comment though. definitely one of the better aspects of the movie. guess I just thought the cliff thing was trite and hardly worth bragging about. unless you believe she invoked the wrath of god and unleashed the power of the sea on the armada. if that's the case (it's not, but if it were), then some of this kneejerk reaction from nodiggity might actually find some reasonable justification.
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... we won't even get into what you did in your country for the "good" of the Commonwealth, you Puritan fanatic. And people in this country wonder why the aristocrats in England persecuted the poor Pilgrims. You sure gave them reason enough. Haha!
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Actually my sobriquet refers to Oliver Cromwell's great great uncle who was Henry VIII's ruthless, yet brilliant chief minister from 1529-40, when he was executed (unfairly) for treason. He was also the architect of the dissolution of the English monasteries. My choice of this name was due to the fact that Thomas Cromwell is someone I admire as a man and politician of principle and toughness, when in our modern age British politicos are wane, shifty and irritating fuckers. I also think the name sounds cool! It in no way reflects my own religious or political beliefs which I am happy to say are Anglican High Church and centerist respectively!
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... yeah, I can't read when I'm in a hurry. Oliver Cromwell does not = Thomas. I'm a dumbass. Dude, one of my favorite movies is "A Man for All Seasons." I love the moral rightness of Sir Thomas More, who that bastard T. Cromwell made sure Henry VIII had beheaded. In fact, it was Cromwell who encouraged Richard Rich's perjured testimony which damned More.Man, were all the Cromwells bastards? I love English history, especially from Henry VIII through Charles II's Restoration of the Crown.
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... how just about every King or Queen, except for Henry VIII, Mary I, and Elizabeth I were really more French than English, you know, since the Norman Conquest. I love how in English, we have four different words for pig. We have pig and hog, from olde english. We have pork (porc) from Norman French. And swine from Germanic Saxons.
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Hey that's Ok man. Oh, and the only tough-ass Cromwells were Tom and Olly, the lot in between were playboys and farmers!
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...whatever you think of his namesake(s).
Mary I was to be sure a failure as a monarch, but most of her bad rap comes from successful Elizabethan-era propaganda, not least the phenomenally successful Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Mary did, unfortunately, give in to Spanish pressure to stamp out Protestantism, and ended up executing about 300 Protestant leaders. Which was not far less than Elizabeth herself, albeit concentrated into a shorter reign. And neither of the sisters could compare with the bloodletting undertaken by their father, Henry VIII, in his erection of the Anglican Church.
In sum, they were all ruthless dynasts in a ruthless age - Mary no more so than was common, and probably a good deal less so. And in such an age, churches of every creed were manipulated in the service of dynastic and state ends. There is a reason it is called the "Spanish" Inquisition - its counterparts in Italy were far more mild, and even that of Spain was considered far more humane than the secular courts. And if Elizabeth had good reason to fear papal efforts to remove her, it is also true she gave them ample reason for doing so: ruthless persecution of Catholics at home and abroad, and the regicide of Mary Queen of Scots.
As for the movie I expected the same historical accuracy as the first movie - which is to say damned little. But it's sad to see that THE GOLDEN AGE lacks even the style and dramatic coherence of its predecessor. I guess I'll wait for it on NETFLIX - if even that.
What a shame. Blanchett deserves better. -
Especially not "Entertainments" with mugging villains twirling moustaches.
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I normally go with Capone, but my oh my did Massa get this one right. Very enjoyable, with a shade too dark on the Catholics. Otherwise, a fine time and 'different' as Massa says from the first movie, yet not in quality.
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I liked it a lot
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Wasn't that bad at all.
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I just wanted some cool ship battles. Do we have that at least? I will wait for cable on this one.
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