Our challenge this week is thus: Is it possible for a director to make a historical film and not have it wind up either: A) totally boring like "The Sun," Aleksandr Sokurov's film about Emperor Hirohito, or B) completely over-the-top and ludicrous like "300"?
Our contestant this week is Shekhar Kapur, a quite capable director who has met this challenge before in 1988, with "Elizabeth." That film fashioned a great thriller out of the courtroom intrigue and sectarian struggles of 16th-century England and featured an astounding performance by a then barely-known Cate Blanchett as the "virgin queen," Elizabeth I.
"Elizabeth" was a critical and box-office success, so it's no surprise a sequel was green-lighted — but it does raise an eyebrow that it took a decade. Kapur's new film, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age," picks up the story 15 years after the end of the previous film and tries to work the same magic. The operative word here is "tries."