I love the H8 series with Keith Michell!  My absolute favorite!  I also liked Young Bess and Elizabeth R.  Man for all Seasons is another great one for me.  Don't own that one yet but have all the others.  A Tudor movie marathon is my favorite past time next to reading. 

 

As far as other historical movies, I like the Crucible, about the Salem witch trials.  Very good!  Also I like A Lion in Winter with Hepburn and O'Toole, I have seen parts of the newer version with Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close and it looks equally good.  Of course what historical movie collection is not complete with all versions of A Christmas Carol.  Period film more than historical but I like the variety of actors for the parts. 

 

Of course The Private Life of Henry VIII with Charles Laughton is a classic in it's own right!

 

Just can't get away from my Tudor loves.

 

Tudorgalusa

I liked  Becket with Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton. I really liked  the series about Elizabeth I with Helen Mirren. She was great...but then she always is. I liked The Last King, a series about Charles II with Rupert Sewell. I liked both movies depicting Elizabeth with Bette Davis....if only for the campy performance she gives. Young Bess with Jean Simmons is good. Also Fire Over England with Laurence Olivier and  Vivienne Leigh with Flora Robson portraying Queen Elizabeth. Actually any of the movies or series that anyone has so far mentioned I liked as well. :) Really, for me, I love most period pieces unless it is really awful. I liked Gladiator, the series Rome, BBC Pride and Prejudice...but come to think of it, I also liked the version with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson...even if Greer was a little long in the tooth for that part. The Madness of King George was good...etc, etc, etc!!

I agree about the series on Charles II. It would have been very tempting to concentrate on his sex life, and for one episode they did, but the rest of the series took a serious look at the politics of the age and as a result I thought it was excellent. I think most Brits, both men and women, who have any knowledge of Charles II regard him as one of their favourite monarchs.

I agree with you Mark...they could have just concentrated more on his private life...ahem! I'm glad they didn't too. I know this isn't tudorish but there is another movie I have been recently re-acquainted with because Criterion released it not too long ago. It takes place in Africa around 1865. It is call The Naked Prey with Cornel Wilde and it was fantastic....great adventure. Has anyone else seen it?

I've not seen it, but another film set in Africa in the 1850s/60s is very good, The Mountains of the Moon about the two rival explorers Richard Burton and John Speke.

 

 

 

 

I saw The Libertine, decadent but good. I still think the definitive Robin Hood was Errol Flynn and nobody since him has been as good a swashbuckler or looked as good in tights. LOL I agree with the critique of Elizabeth and Essex and I'll tell you a little bit of trivia from that movie. Bette Davis loathed Errol Flynn when they made that movie together and there is a scene where she slaps him across the face. She was wearing a very big ring and she really let him have it. If you look carefully, you can see the total look of surprise and then anger that showed on his face and according to his biography, that was genuine. Also I thought she was going to put a hip out the way she was walking in that movie. LOL

 

 

 

 

I just saw "The Virgin Queen" with Betty Davis and I have seen "Elizabeth & Essex"  She does walk like the walking dead in both movies and her arm movements are real jerky too.  Like a puppet whose strings are too tight!

 

Maybe they had her bound up too tight!  LOL.  Sure would like to know what's behind it though.

 

Tudorgalusa