Blanchett rules the big screen

Already sporting a Venice Best Actress prize for I'm Not There, Cate Blanchett could well be competing with herself come the awards season, thanks to a bravura performance in Elizabeth: The Golden Age, directed (like its 1998 predecessor about the Virgin Queen) by Shekhar Kapur.

Striding through the film in a series of colour-coordinated outfits, Blanchett leaves no doubt as to who's in charge, be it in Elizabethan England or on the screen. Even so, her performance-is several notches below the general level of hysteria with which Kapur infuses the film, abetted by a score that has more soaring choral crescendos than an Eisteddfod.

This is not historical drama so much as heritage cinema for the North American market, replete with rolling English hills and soaring English cathedrals.

It is 1585. The Spanish Papists threaten Protestant England, whose Catholic minority seem ready to back Mary, Queen of Scots. Elizabeth, meanwhile, is still a virgin.

When Mary is executed for treason, the Spanish launch their Armada. History here is recast as ripping yarn: it is Sir Walter Raleigh, played dashingly by Clive Owen, who saves England by steering the fire ships in among the Spaniards, then swimming underwater to safety beneath a blazing sea.

Elsewhere, Owen trots gamely in Blanchett's wake (and, yes, he does throw down his cloak to protect her from a puddle).

Geoffrey Rush is wise and devious as the Queen's adviser Walsingham; Abbie Cornish adorably perky as a lady in waiting; and Samantha Morton is a very Scottish Mary who gets a nifty death scene. But they're no match for Blanchett, who tosses the film over her shoulder like one of her many sumptuous costumes.

Now statesmanlike, now vulnerable, now the mounted warrior queen (her silver armour is a sight to behold), she refutes singlehandedly the idea that they don't make 'em like this any more.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age