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Emma @ The Movies (1786 KP) rated Mary Queen of Scots (2018) in Movies

Sep 25, 2019

Mary Queen of Scots (2018)

2018 | Biography, Drama, History

6.3

(15 Ratings)

Movie Rating Watch

January is proving to be a challenging month, so many historical and biographical movies and a lot of me saying "this was great but..."

Scrolling back through Saoirse Ronan's acting career I've only actually seen her in two things, Lady Bird and City Of Embers (which for the life of me I cannot remember her in), and I can't say that I was going in as a fan, but I came out pleasantly surprised by her powerful portrayal of Mary.

The cast in this is brilliant, so many recognisable faces. Ian Hart, Gemma Chan, David Tennant (not initially so recognisable until he starts to speak), Brendan Coyle and Joe Alwyn who is clearly hedging his bets by appearing in The Favourite as well.

Margot Robbie is wonderful, just generally, and I love so many of her roles. I do feel like she was rather underused as Elizabeth, but thankfully her brief appearances were quite striking.

I was so happy to see Adrian Lester's name connected to this. I'm slightly obsessed with Hustle, and his stage and screen work is usually something tremendously entertaining to watch. However, I didn't feel that the script allowed him to get anything good out of Lord Randolph sadly. Guy Pearce fared much better and gave an impressive performance.

Visually the locations and costumes make for a magnificent film, but while I wasn't bored at any point it does feel like it could have lost a few minutes here and there.

What you should do

It's worth giving a watch at some point but I don't think there's any rush to get to the cinema for it.

Movie thing you wish you could take home

Some quality Mary ginger hair... maybe without the halo of volume.