"THE QUEEN" (2006) ****

You can sign me up for anything Helen Mirren's in--I'd pay to see her play the lead role in "The Two-Ton Tony Galento Story." She is the best actress on this planet.
I was expecting a great performance by her. I didn't much think about the movie. What I got was a stupendous performance in a brilliant film. She looks, acts, walks, breathes so much like Queen Elizabeth that you have to continually remind yourself that you're not watching the real Queen. She has a terrific little intro to new Labour PM Tony (Mr. Modernize Britain) Blair and his Royals-resenting wife (Michael Sheen and Helen McCrory), bests the two of them, and seems to drift back into her vapid little world. But soon enough, Princess Di buys the farm in France, and the pressure's on. First the Royals determine to ignore the event ("She was no longer an HRH," snorts the Queen and her fathead husband Prince Philip, played perfectly by James Cromwell). But the phenominal outpouring makes Blair, who at first seems like a latter-day Brit flower child, step up to the plate and remind the Queen that there's somethin' goin' on and ya don't know what it is, do you, Mrs. Windsor. He gets some support from Prince Charles (Alex Jennings, who plays him as weak but not quite the total airhead he seems to be in real life). Meanwhile, the Royals go on stag hunts at Balmoral and try their best to ignore the frenzy. Finally, the Queen cracks her facade and, in a touching and superbly realized scene, with quiet dignity makes nice to the British people.
As Elizabeth, Mirren manages the extraordinary task of showing the Queen as chilly but not totally without a heart. She manages to balance the stuffy protocol side with her overarching sense of duty, and you're left admiring her at last. Stephen Frears' direction is economical and tasteful. He also adds several wickedly understated funny lines, many of them courtesy of the Queen Mother (Sylvia Sims). This is a first-rate film from start to finish.