Miscellaneous Movie Musings the Sequel

[innerSpaceman]

Yeah, I was sold on that until the ending as well. Turned an ok movie into a meh.



In other surprise recommendations from me, however ... The Iron Lady.

I'd heard it was a hot mess, and that Streep stole the Oscar with a fine impersonation.


Nope, I must have seen a different movie. It was a perfectly fine biopic, told very sweetly from the point-of-view of an aging Margaret Thatcher coping with deep senility and looking back on her career. I don't want to give too much away because I recommend seeing it on disc, but the particulars of that point-of-view established a deep sympathy for the character. And Streep's performance is far more than impersonation (but the impersonation aspects are indeed there and indeed fun).

I can't help but compare this favorably to last year's other famous biopic, J. Edgar, which was appalling and a dismal failure. Both movies shuttle back and forth in time, but The Iron Lady keeps a firm footing in the "present" of Thatcher's old age, and the flashbacks are presented pretty much in chronological order. J. Edgar seemed to have no "home base" and the time periods just fluttered about randomly and confusingly.

Oh, and the old age makeup in J. Edgar was embarrassing. The make-up in The Iron Lady is fantastic. This is not an unimportant element when telling a life story from young to old. Oh, and J. Edgar stars Leonardo DiCaprio, clearly out of his depth. The Iron Lady stars Meryl Streep, earning yet another well-deserved Best Actress Academy Award.

Both films take the standard biopic tack of pinning the main character's, well, character on a parent. J. Edgar did that with a sledgehammer, Iron Lady with a feather. But it's too simplistic in both cases, and I left both films not really feeling I got deeply enough into the life motivations of the main characters. I'm not sure if that can be done to my satisfaction in a movie-length biopic. So I give lots of leeway to the genre. Even with that slack, I left J. Edgar feeling confused about the character and not at all entertained. To my surprise, I was very entertained by The Iron Lady and left less confused about Margaret Thatcher than when I came in.

The Iron Lady is a bio success in my book. J. Edgar a sorry disappointment.