Catherine Parr, the sixth wife of England’s Henry VIII, for myriad reasons tends to keep things buttoned up. Her increasingly paranoid monster of a hubby has already divorced two of her predecessors (one after breaking with the Catholic church for that purpose), beheaded two more, and one just died. Worse,
unbeknownst to him, she secretly harbors radical protestant beliefs. Everyone in the palace, especially a venal bishop, is gleefully waiting for another queenly head to roll.

Well, I watched this all the way through, but it’s a slog. It’s opaque and messy and requires a prior knowledge of (or at least an interest in) bloody Tudor intrigue. Alicia Vikander does what she can with the lead role, but when the script requires extreme withdrawal, what’s an actress to do? She simmers through the part perfectly well — until the explosive (and blatantly revisionist) final scene.

The main reason to spend two hours of your life watching this one is Jude Law, virtually unrecognizable as the tyrannical Henry. The dreary film comes to life whenever he storms onto the scene. Horribly good. (121 min)