The Queen

Although queens named Elizabeth have lately been fodder for the most featherweight of Oscar winners (Shakespeare in Love), The Queen—which explores the tension between Her Royal Highness Elizabeth II (Mirren) and Tony Blair (Sheen) during the national grief that followed Princess Diana’s death—turns out to be a supremely intelligent look into modern media politics, and the British monarchy’s rather tenuous position in that arena.

The queen, after all, is about as traditional a symbol as any country in the world has for its values. But when the royalty’s rituals become ends in and of themselves—as they did that week, when the queen, possibly motivated by her own dislike of Diana, secluded herself at her summer residence, neither issuing a public statement nor lowering the flag at Buckingham Palace—are they really worth the taxpayer pounds that fund them?

Supposedly researched through interviews with those in the know (in addition, Adam Curtis—whose The Power of Nightmares is the essential documentary of the Bush era—served as an archive consultant), Frears’s film is undercut by screenwriter Peter Morgan’s tidier gimmicks—the notion that Blair gets his best ideas from his speechwriter, for instance, and the metaphor comparing naive Elizabeth to a doomed stag. But Frears keeps the pace at CNN-marathon boil, and Sheen and Mirren wrestle credibly with roles that, in Britain, will by necessity create mixed emotions. —Ben Kenigsberg