Elizabeth: Radiant or Rotten?
The early reviews of “Elizabeth: The Golden Age,” the sequel to “Elizabeth,” have been trickling in from the Toronto Film Festival, and I can’t say I’m surprised that they are all over the board. The Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt calls this extravagant film about England’s 16th-century monarch, starring Cate Blanchett, “robust historical fiction.” But my gut sense tells me that the assessment by the usually accurate Todd McCarthy of Variety is probably more to the point: he writes in this very elegant review that the movie is “melodramatic, narrowly concerned with portraying [Elizabeth’s] human vulnerabilities, and, thanks to a constantly pounding musical score, bombastic.” If McCarthy’s prediction of the movie’s so-so commercial prospects proves correct, then Keira Knightley‘s Oscar chances for Best Actress just ratcheted up.
