When news of the death of Princess Diana, undoubtedly the most famous woman in the world, breaks upon a shocked and disbelieving British public, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II retreats behind the walls of Balmoral Castle with her family, unable to comprehend the public response to the tragedy.

For Tony Blair, the popular and newly elected Prime Minister, the people's need for reassurance and support from their leaders is palpable. As the unprecedented outpouring of emotion grows ever stronger, Blair must find a way to reconnect the Queen with the British public. — More here

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Crowning achievement
Ty Burr
Boston Globe
So good is Mirren, though -- so real does she make this woman whom you and I will never know -- that you sense Elizabeth recognizes the truth of the symbolism even as she finds it a bit much. Taste can carry you only so far, and ``The Queen" is about a woman finally understanding she's a reflection of her people rather than the other way around.

It's Deceased Diana vs. the Windsors in The Queen, a deliciously satirical comedy-drama
Richard Corliss
TIME Magazine
History isn't supposed to repeat itself so quickly, but George W. Bush's tardy response last year to Katrina's devastation of the Gulf Coast echoed almost exactly the lethargy that enveloped the Royal Family of Britain eight years before, in the days following the car crash that killed Princess Diana. Like Bush in Crawford, the Queen stayed holed up in Balmoral, her country estate in Scotland, while her subjects, shocked by the violent death of the blond goddess whose flaws they cherished as much as her charms, sobbed their hearts out. Strange, isn't it, how the powerful get short-circuited from their power base...

Sublimely nimble evisceration
Manohla Dargis
New York Times
Stephen Frears' sublimely nimble evisceration of the British royal family pries open a window in the House of Windsor around the time of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales...

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