DISQUS

Film School Rejects: The Queen

  • Loukas · 2 years ago
    Dude, come on. Tony Blair is for laughs. The script practically calls him a saint who learns everything last. The only thing accurate to true life is his charismatic spin doctor. Mirren is spectacular but not enough to save the banality. Kings and Queens are human beings too??? Come on... if anybody needs to spell that out then we must be more naive than the film's Tony Blair.

    Loved the parasite king though. James Cromwell steals the show.
  • Clayton L. White · 2 years ago
    I thought the script took it easy on everybody, but that doesn't prevent it from being a story that is relevant and well told. I never said that the fact that Kings and Queens were human beings needed spelling out, I just think it's nice to see a movie that portrays them this way. The script is a work of speculative fiction, and I thought it did a good job. The movie is fairly short, it's never boring, and the acting is great. I found very little to complain about.
  • H. Stewart · 2 years ago
    I think you're both missing the point, which is that kings and queens aren't human beings, they're direct descendents of the gods.

    Anyway, I'll be renting this one soon enough; I was feeling a little ambivalent(especially after that dreadful clip from the Oscars where Helen Mirren was talking to herself aloud..."Oh my word, a stag") about watching this but I'll take your word for it and rent it merrily. From the sound of your review (great lead by the way!) it sounds like a great actor's piece with a competent director, screenplay, cameraman, etc. I'm down, especially because it's (relatively) short.
  • Loukas · 2 years ago
    No H. don't rent it. I'm sure there are better movies available. What about the new Ernest flick?... and here we go again!

    Ok, it's not a bad movie, but the Blair depiction was a bit too much for my gut to handle.
  • Clayton L. White · 2 years ago
    I can honestly see your point about Blair, Loukas. To me, the film showed Blair as a young idealist, and that's what he was in 1997. Sure, he's certainly made out to be the hero here, but Sheen plays it well, and I bought into it. Many people have made this film out to be some sort of masterpiece, which it's not, but it's solid and certainly worth renting.
  • Loukas · 2 years ago
    Allow me to say that he wasn't an idealist in the pure sense but fully aware of what his office was about. I was almost your age then. This is the British Prime Minister not the Mayor of Tinseltown.

    The Queen on the other hand is much better scripted, with strong character and clever lines and ows a lot to Hellen Mirren for making us like her.

    It's worth renting of course, cause you don't see a descent movie about Her Majesty the Queen of England every day but it's a weird career move for Stephen Frears.
  • Clayton L. White · 2 years ago
    Fair enough, but what I mean by "idealist", I guess, is that it seemed like he had a more romantic vision, or ideals, I guess. I don't know what I'm trying to say. Blair said that Diana was the "People's Princess," do you think it's going too far to say that most people saw him as the "people's prime minister" ?
  • Loukas · 2 years ago
    Maybe... he was very promising at the time. But 10 years later, as a European, it sounds a bit over the top to me. Even irritating.

    As for Diana, i guess she penetrated a very close circle by just being nice. That must have been an apocalypse for the palace as far as communication tactics are concerned. I don't know more about Di cause in Greece we weren't as preoccupied with British celebs as much as after her death.
  • H. Stewart · 2 years ago
    A movie coming out now with Tony Blair as something of a hero? Sounds as suspicious as a movie about heroic Westerners invading Persia...