Startlingly sexy, with dark shadows and bold colors, Elizabeth is a well-appointed costume drama yet hardly a stuffy one. It springs from the screen as if it were a pop-up book. The sumptuous visual scheme is from director Shekhar Kapur, but the movie belongs to Cate Blanchett thanks to her breakout performance as England’s queen. As the movie imagines how this naïve, free-spirited half-sister of Mary Tudor went on to become an icy and powerful monarch, Blanchett makes a mesmerizing emotional and physical transformation.
