Citizen Rules...Cinemaesque Chat-n-Review

Thanks Ed, I was really looking forward to Wild Oats too. Well tonight I'm rewatching The Queen (2006) I seen MovieMax mention it and thought why not!

I've been on the fence about The Queen, have you reviewed it previously? Can't remember

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If you're interested, I wrote a review of The Queen which is on the first page of my review thread.

Nope, I hadn't ever reviewed The Queen before, but I watched it last night, loved it, so will write a review, starting right now!

Thanks Gideon, I'll definitely be checking it out

Director: Stephen Frears
Writer: Peter Morgan
Cast: Helen Mirren, Michael Sheen, James Cromwell
Genre: Biography, Drama, History

About: An up-close and personal look at Queen Elizabeth II reaction to the untimely death of Princess Diana and the events that followed. As a nation and the world mourns the loss of Diana, the Royal family's initial reaction of saying nothing causes a backlash at the monarchy. These events are taking place as the UK's most personable Prime Minister ,Tony Blair is being sworn into office.


Review: Helen Mirren won a Best Actress Oscar for her unflinching portrayal of the Queen. The Queen was also nominated for four other Oscars including Best Directing and Best Picture.

2006's The Queen gives us one of the frankest looks at the Royal family. What we see is not always pretty. To the films credit it dodges no bullets and lays the events of August 1997 squarely on the line. If ever a film has been deserving of being called a Biography, this is it.

I've watched quite a number of documentaries and shows about the Royals and instantly I accepted Helen Mirren as the Queen. She is the Queen...With her spot on performance, complete with a certain reserved stiffness that the real Elizabeth shows in her public side, she makes the Queen real, that then makes the movie real.


The actor who played Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) nailed the Cheshire grinning PM of Britain so much that four years latter he reprises his role as Tony Blair in The Special Relationship (2010).


I remember the events of 1997 when the world was shocked to learn of the lose of Princess Diana. I remember the outpouring of love for her with flowers piled high around Buckingham Palace. I remember the controversy over the apparent lack of concern by the Royals in the days before Diana's funeral was held. I remember the intense media coverage and the final outcome too. The Queen tells this story that I know while filling in the behind the scenes reasons why the Queen took the actions that she did.

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Director: Amma Asante
Writer: Misan Sagay
Cast: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Matthew Goode, Emily Watson
Genre: Biography, Drama, History

Based on the real life story of a young girl, Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) who's the mixed race daughter of a Royal Navy Admiral. She's raised during her fathers absences by her prominent and wealthy great uncle, who's the highest judge in Britain.

The movie takes place in 18th century England, and is not what you are expecting. Most likely you think this is going to explore racism and bigotry. And you might expect to see the people of 18th century London hurling insults and dirty water at Belle. It would have been easy for a film maker to craft a film like that and get maximum emotional appeal from the audience.


Instead the film takes a much more positive look at the life of Belle. Yes, she does meet resistance due to her mixed race and yes there are a couple of bigoted people, but most of the people we see in the film love and respect her. Her half sister loves her, as does her great uncle who raises her. She is courted and found a beauty by two prominent men. I liked that the movies positive message is focused on the good that is in most people's heart. Of course she does meet the a few people who are antagonistic of her, but she handles them with class and poise.

Maybe it's the romantic in me, but I was glad to see Belle succeed and rise above any discrimination she might have faced. The best thing I can say about this film is it's intelligently written and does not manipulate the audiences feelings unduly.

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Personally, I didn't care for The Queen. I think this was more due to expectations because I was expecting a lifetime biography of Elizabeth.
But the movie focuses only on one small period in her life, namely the death of her daughter-in-law Diana - which is the true crux of the movie - and how that event effected the Queen.

Not that there's anything wrong with the film per se, but I kind of gave the same criticism to The Queen that I gave to Lincoln (2012), because Lincoln is more about the passing of the 13 amendment (the actual crux of the film) than it is about the life of Abe Lincoln. As with The Queen, Lincoln is a very well done movie, but it only covers a very short period in the man's life because it's not about his life, but about an event that he was pivotal in.

I agree the performance of the actor playing Tony Blair was a highlight of the film - and I probably feel that way because Blair was one PM I grew familiar with due to his many appearances after 9/11.

I haven't seen it, but, he also played him in The Deal (2003), a prequel to The Queen.

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Still need to see The Queen...

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Director: David Lynch
Writers: Frank Herbert(novel), David Lynch(screenplay)
Cast: Kyle MacLachlan, Virginia Madsen, Francesca Annis
Genre: Sci-Fi

10,000 Years into Mankind's Future. The spice drug Melange, a substance that expands consciousness, extends life and makes interstellar travel possible...is threatened by a genetically superior super being who's the son of a powerful Duke. In a ploy to kill him, a series of events take place that reshape the future of mankind.

I highly recommend watching the original Theatrical Cut and not the extended version that was done for TV. The Theatrical Cut, doesn't drag and includes some scenes that were far too disturbing for TV. If the version you watch starts out with a young woman (Virginia Madsen) superimposed over a star field, then you're watching the Theatrical Cut.

Dune (1984) is either loved or hated, with scant little space in between. I seen Dune in it's first run at the theater. I had seen the trailers on TV and then read the novel by Frank Herbert...then I watched the movie, which I enjoyed. David Lynch's version of Dune had a great look to it and his casting was sublime. For me, someone who was familiar with the book, the movie served as a visual abridged version of the novel I had just read. Other people at the time thought the movie was weird or confusing. And if I hadn't read the book I would have agreed with that.

I think the reason people dislike Dune is it can't match the book for detailed nuisances and 'plans within plans'....There's no way David Lynch within the two hours allotted to him by the executive producers and the studio could tell a complex, multi character, multi plotted, story in only 2 hours. He would have needed to make a 4 hour movie if not longer to do that. So what we get is a visual record of most of the scenes that occur in the novel, but without the meat. The scenes are brief. Too brief for the casual viewer to connect to the film. In the end it's just too much story for only 2 hours.

On the plus side David Lynch gave us a beautifully envisioned Dune, richly detailed with colorful characters. It is what it is and I for one enjoy it.

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Interesting. A few months back I finally sat through an entire viewing of Dune without interruption. It's a film I'd only seen snippets of, but could never seem to make it through a straight viewing. I'd forgotten that it was made by David Lynch - then kept wondering why it was so dang weird and reminded me somewhat of several other weird films I'd seen (Lynch films, of course).

One aspect (and I'm still not sure if I liked it or didn't) was the regular use of the characters' internal thoughts as voice overs. It was definitely unique and I can't think of any other films where that was done for almost all of the main characters.

I think when I watched it I was finally in the mood for its weirdness (plus I'd seen the documentary Jodorowsky's Dune (2013) which we discussed and which kind of renewed my interest in watching the Lynch version in its entirety.)
Still not sure how I'd rate it, but it's definitely not for everybody.

I tried watching Dune a long time ago, but the only thing that I remember about it was that I hated it, and I couldn't sit through the whole movie.

I read that they're making a new Dune movie, so maybe I'll give that a chance when it's released.

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I'm with you gbg. I think Dune is one of the worst films i've ever seen and i love David Lynch. It does have its fans though and that's fine, glad you enjoyed it Citizen.

Which version did you see Captain? If it was the extended version, I find that one boring. If there was a scene with a baby worm being drowned in a tank of water, that was the infamous extended version...David Lynch hated that version so much he had his name taken off the credits.

The original Theatrical cut is shorter by 49 minutes. But the Theatrical cut contains a brief but disturbing scene, that equals the infamous dwarf scene in Solaris (1972).

Mainly he's known for Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire (I never seen those) and back in the 80s he did Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and of course Dune. But not all of his films are weird The Straight Story (1999), was a conventional and even heart warming story.

I'm guessing that was done to save time. That way we do get some of the back story without the need to make the film longer. I read that Lynch had wanted it .


Yup! that's true...If I hadn't read and really loved the book, I would probably think Dune was unique visually, and weird and kind of cool but lacking continuity in the story. And if you read all that stuff I posted you can see what happened to make it that way.

Excellent review, Citizen.

Thank Gideon, that was my second watching of that film. I liked it so much that I requested from my library several documentations on Queen Elizabeth II.

Rules - I think I saw the original theatrical version of Dune. It was on cable and I don't recall the scene you mentioned from the extended version.

Now you'll have to tell me which scene was the disturbing one that was on par with Solaris. It's been a while since I watched Dune so my memory needs refreshing (I recall there were a couple slightly disturbing scenes.)

Coincidentally, I haven't seen the same Lynch films that you haven't seen. (I keep reminding myself to try to watch Mulholland Drive someday. I never watched an episode of Twin Peaks). I think of his The Elephant Man as a mainstream movie - the subject matter is unusual, but the story is linear where the only surreal moments occur in actual dreams. It's a great, disturbing and very moving film.

I always wonder what a surreal ultra-violent fantasy film would look like if Lynch, Tarantino and Burton teamed up!

I hadn't seen this particular scene for 32 years! And even though I've seen Dune at least a half dozen times since, I totally forgot about this scene as it's cut from the extended version.

Towards the start of the film, we're introduced to the bad guys, the Harkonnens. The cut scene, has a young effeminate boyish male enter the Baron Harkonnen's chamber, where he places flowers on the wall...and he's scared senseless! I mean he's little, puny and shaking all over, he looks like he's entered into hell. The Baron with a lusting, devious gleam in his eye walks over to him, caresses his face and then...pulls out his heart plug, with blood splattering the Baron in the face, who's loving it. As the poor young male is being drained of his blood, the camera cuts to a close up of the Baron's face, so that we can't seen what he does next to young male, but it appears to be something violent, sexual done as the poor victim dies.

It's effective, like the Solaris dwarf scene, because it's brief and we never seen what is actually happening, we only see that the victim is terrified, which then allows our minds to fill in the disgusting stuff.

I know what you mean, Captain...there seems to be a trend lately with films purported to be biopics or marketed as such...instead of giving us an overview of the subject's entire life, they just seem to focus on a very specific period in the subject's life. There were actually two different movies made about Truman Capote. One was Capote that won Phillip Seymour Hoffman the Oscar and the other released the following year was Infamous, but instead of being a story of the author's life, they both turned out to be about the exact same thing...when Capote traveled to Kansas to meet the killers behind the murders that were the basis of his novel "In Cold Blood." I remember being excited when Citizen told me about a movie about Errol Flynn called The Last Robin Hood, which really interested me because I also wanted to learn about Flynn...the movie opened after Flynn had made the last movie he ever made and focused on his affair with a 15 year old girl. When I sit down to watch a biopic, I would like an overview of most of their life, like Coal Miner's Daughter. now that was a biopic!