Another installment in the long-running royal soap opera. Think of it as Elizabeth: The Genesis, an hysterical-historical story of court intrigue, concentrating heavily, and heavy-breathingly, on bedroom intrigue, the sibling rivalry over the affections of Henry VIII. The “other” Boleyn girl, as she is self-described in the dialogue, turns out to be the one we know best, Anne, second wife of Henry, mother of Elizabeth (too peewee to be played here by Cate Blanchett), and famously cleaved at the neck. A saucy young lass, so bold as to use the word “thighs” in direct address to the King, she is also, in this telling (very different from Anne of the Thousand Days, with Genevieve Bujold), the “bad” Boleyn girl, despite the fact that she is the one who withholds her favors till after the wedding, a bit of leverage wielded with all the calculation of the classical femme fatale, the man-trap, the gold-digger, the home-wrecker, the bewitcher, enticing Henry (a brawny Eric Bana) to split not just with the sitting Queen but with the Pope in the bargain, and to situate himself at the head of the Church of England. The cool, porcelain Natalie Portman, looking like the snooty girl in the front row of freshman Physics, hardly seems at first glance to fill the bill, and in the final reckoning falls far short. (The “good” Boleyn girl, the lesser-known Mary, is the one who, while still a newlywed, has an earlier stint as the King’s mistress, although the pouty Scarlett Johansson makes plain that that was a position she never sought nor desired.) The creative team — TV director Justin Chadwick, screenwriter Peter Morgan (The Queen), original novelist Philippa Gregory, whoever else — more or less corroborate the Crown’s smear campaign against Anne, in effect endorsing her beheading, and standing in roughly the same relation to Henry as Fox News to George W. Bush. With Kristin Scott Thomas, Mark Rylance, David Morrissey, Jim Sturgess, and Ana Torrent. (2008) — Duncan Shepherd