The Other Boleyn Girl (2003)

Nice effects though.

Brilliant and touching

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

I am not a fan of the original book but was expecting to see a better adaptation than the Natalie Portman movie, which I found awful. This version is even worse.First, there is very little of Ms. Gregory's book in this script. The whole subplot of George Boleyn's sexuality is completely eliminated and in this version George is merely a flunky shuttling between his duty to the Boleyn family and his duty to the King. I thought the title of the book referred to Mary as the lesser-known of the Boleyn sisters, but here it is used to refer to Anne.Second, the script has the characters periodically address the audience as if in confession. Apparently this is intended to give a bit of back story and explain their motives, but it is amateurish in execution.On top of the bad script, the direction is stunningly bad. There are too many shots done with a circling camera which is none-too-steady at best and downright shaky at worst. Several of the speeches are delivered tentatively, as if in a first rehearsal. The production values for Henry's flamboyant court are minimal. The costumes vary: some are copies of historical portraits and others are from some costume designer's fevered imagination. And the King, the source of all power and favors, is often shown ALONE. No fawning courtiers, no servants in the background - where are all the people?? I am accustomed to Hollywood turning history into fantasy, but I expected better from a BBC production. Even based on a flawed book this production is BAD.

I absolutely loved this film. I had not heard the story, so was first of all blown away by this. Secondly, I loved the director's (Lowthorpe's) imaginative and modern approach to filming and editing. It would have been so easy to do a traditional TV drama piece: wide shot, medium shot, close up for the emotion. I felt I was there and using a modern idiom in the style made the drama and intrigue so modern, so 'now' for me. I remember the first films I saw of hers, it was a period piece set in a railway station. The director had not asked the modern dressed travelers to leave. It was so refreshing. Drama has to cross centuries for us to engage and that is what Lowthorpe is doing for me in her work.

I have mixed feelings about this film. I appreciated the use of color, it represents the harshness of the time. It's a nice change to see a period piece that's not glamorous. I can imagine it's tempting to make the good looking cast even better looking. The confessions in the camera I didn't understand. I do understand it was anattempt to make it more intimate. But I don't think it workout that well here. I consider it to modern. It works in comedy like 'the private life of Samuel Pepys'. There it was brilliant. Maybe they could've used a confession setting for these scene's instead of putting them into a room speaking to the camera. And usedmore close-ups instead of medium shots. That would make it more intimate anddramatic. The acting is superb! I enjoyed to see Jodhi May paying a wicked woman for achange. She portrayed Anne Boleyn very good Her sick and cruel pleasure totorture her family by for example trying to marry of her sister to a fat ugly man. Her frightening ambition and abuse of power is portrayed brilliantly. The actor who played Henry and the actress who played Mary were alsobrilliant. The rest of the cast were very complementary to the leading ladies and man.Very good. This is not a story about one person. It's about relations between people. This movie explains why Mary survived.This is really a film worth wile seeing. But don't expect to see a conventional historical epic. Voted 8A-M ---- English is not my first language so please excuse my spelling and grammarerrors

If this sets the new direction for period dramas, then I'm all for it! Gone are the stuffy mannerisms and cookie-cutter direction. In comes a new era of BBC costume drama, even with the oh, so familiar face of Jodhi May. MY how we've never seen her in just this way before! Heaving bosoms and lustful swaggers and I was HOOKED in the first fifteen minutes! I SO HOPE it is released to DVD!!! The story of Anne Boleyn is known far and wide, but I don't think it's ever been told from the perspective of what it must have been like to be a young woman in those ruthless times. And Anne was ruthless, there's no doubt about it. However, the beauty of this production is that it sheds light on *why* she maneuvered herself the way she did. The mother of England's greatest queen, Elizabeth I, had to have a lot of chutzpah to not only gain the king's favor, but keep it - and his sexual desires - at bay for years before bagging him and the crown as her own. This adaptation really makes one wonder what the country would have been like had she only managed to bear a male heir, and hence, keep her head.BRAVO BBC!