The Other Boleyn Girl (2008, DVD)

Follows sisters Mary and Anne Boleyn (Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman, respectively) in a film that easily could have been called “The Other Woman,” with all that implies. 

The film is a full-on Tudor soap opera, with Peter Morgan (“The Queen”) basing his script on Philippa Gregory’s 2002 novel, which also only used this historical backdrop to bolster its wild run into the velvet walls of potboiler fiction.

Like the book, the movie amplifies history’s more salacious elements in an effort to wedge sex, lust and sibling rivalry within the frequent machinations, court upheavals, betrayals and beheadings that followed the rule of the infamous King Henry VIII (Eric Bana) in 16th-century England, when he was seeking a male heir.

Johansson is stuck with the less-showy role, Bana is fine as the best-looking Henry in history, but as for Portman, she’s so good at balancing how the quest for power and position corrupted her relationship with her sister and which ultimately led to her own undoing by the sword, that she turns out to be the best reason to see the movie.

Read the full, unedited review here.

Rated PG-13. Grade: B-