[katyseagull]

The Queen

A fascinating look at the royal family, though overly long. This is the film that deals with how the royal family behaved in the days following the death of Princess Diana. Basically peels the cover off of this cloistered family and how they completely miscalculated the values of their own countrymen. Helen Mirren is great as Queen Elizabeth, caught in the crosshairs, stubbornly rebuffing her country's embrace of modernity. We see her facade begin to crack as she is persuaded by a newly elected and very popular Tony Blair to set aside her belief in tradition and duty and oblige the public's desire for an emotional funeral.

Michael Sheen gives a nice performance as the prime minister. I was surprised to find out that it was Tony Blair who was the one to fly to France to meet Charles with Diana's casket, and that it was he who took control of the public relations aspect of the situation. He is portrayed as a very decent and likable prime minister who tries his best to help the royals along (a bittersweet performance as we all know how his own story will play out).

This film shows what we all knew, that Princess Diana was a thorn in the royal's side. (How is it that the more nutty and unstable Diana became the more it seemed the public loved her?) It must have been very frustrating for the queen.


I thought it gave a very unflattering picture of the royal family overall (Charles is portrayed as ridiculously soft and scared; Phillip and Elizabeth as completely unfeeling) but I'm really curious to know what others think. I was surprised to see a couple of reviews on Rotten Tomatoes that referred to it as a "comedy" and "sympathetic". Lol. I'm not sure we were watching the same film [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img].


Evan Almighty

This is more a kids film I think. Adults will be really disappointed with it. I thought the first half was actually promising and I laughed. The second half not so much. Pretty dopey! It tries too hard to get laughs and it misses horribly. The story is just really bad and the characters are all weak.