The Iron Lady is one of those flashback retellings of a life that is just a little too constructed and non-contextual for my taste. We meet Maggie Thatcher in her last days as she is suffering from dementia and wandering around talking to her dead husband (Jim Broadbent). As she putters around the house alternately dealing with her many handlers, her grown daughter, and the ghost of Mr. Thatcher, she looks back over her political life, and her rise to become the first and only female Prime Minister of England. She begins as a very working class girl, the proverbial shopkeeper’s daughter who gets into Oxford and then scratches her way into the male dominated political field and all the way to the top. Along the way, she marries and has twins, but mostly they are peripheral. The conspicuously missing piece is what drove this woman and what was really happening around her. Why were they rioting in the streets? Why did she hate unions? What was it about the Falklands that was worth having hundreds of young men die? I think this may be one of those scripts that assumes the audience knows the history. (We Yanks did not.)

There is a scene near the end where she is so over-the-top horrible to one of her long-time political allies that she turns the whole party against her, but we don’t know why. Was it the early onset of dementia or was she drinking? Or maybe she was just a bitch? The film has lots of little moments that don’t quite make sense. You also have no sense of what is historic fact and what is total fiction. I think there is probably a great story to be told about Thatcher. Sure, I hated her politics, but she was charismatic and intelligent enough to make it to the top despite her class and her sex, and to stand among the most powerful people of her time. Sadly, The Iron Lady does not do her justice. Meryl aside, I’d skip it.

As of this writing Meryl Streep has been nominated all over the place and won the Golden Globe for her performance.

Based on a book and a stage play and a real life story, the film tells the tale of a young Russian woman named Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) who arrives kicking and screaming at the Swiss hospital where Dr. Jung practices in 1904. She is in desperate need of help for a whole slew of severe neuroses. His treatment is the new “talking cure,” and it turns out she is no mere hysteric, but a very intelligent girl who hopes to become a doctor and is very curious about these new techniques in the emerging field of psychoanalysis. After Jung treats and cures her, she heads to the university and an intellectual relationship blossoms, but then sparked by their discussions of Freud’s ideas about sexual repression, it turns into a passionate affair. It is doomed, of course, to fail. He is married with a rich wife and several children, and she is a former patient and a Jew.

And while this relationship is evolving, Jung is developing his most important relationship. As his treatment of Sabina moves forward, he corresponds and debates with his dear friend and mentor in Vienna, the great psychologist Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen). He is at first sure that Freud is wrong about every neurosis having a sexual cause. But as he gets to know Sabina he learns that she was not simply abused, but she became aroused by the humiliation. And as the relationship between the two pioneers of modern psychoanalysis develops, a rivalry emerges. Early on Jung refers to Freud as his “father figure.” Freud’s theories were revolutionary and he was happy to have younger doctors taking up his cause, but when Jung begins to assert his own ideas, Freud is at first disparaging, and ultimately unable to sustain the friendship, resulting in a break-up that deeply wounds both men.

David Cronenberg (Dead Ringers, The Fly, Crash) is not known for making restrained movies, but A Dangerous Method possesses a subdued, intelligent elegance. Except for Keira Knightley’s early grotesque histrionics, and a bit of naughty spanking, the film is mostly fascinating conversation and beautiful locations. The performances are all stellar, including a few manic scenes with Vincent Cassel (Black Swan) playing a patient who believes that sexual repression is the greatest sin. With A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, and now this beautifully subtle piece of film making, I think Cronenberg has moved into his intelligent adult period, and I cannot wait for his next one.

[I think we can all be grateful for scheduling conflicts. Christoph Waltz was initially cast as Sigmund Freud, but was replaced by Viggo Mortensen. Christian Bale had been in talks to play Carl Jung, and the role of Sabina Spielrein in the screenplay was written for Julia Roberts.]

J. Edgar is good and interesting (no real surprise since it’s directed by Clint Eastwood), but it’s Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance in the title role that really makes it worth seeing. Yes, that kid from Growing Pains (and Titanic of course) has matured into a mighty fine actor. He’s already shown his chops in movies like Catch Me if You Can, The Aviator, Blood Diamond, The Departed, Revolutionary Road, Inception, etc.… but this movie showcases his talents in a much more subtle and nuanced way. He should (and probably will) at least be nominated for a Best Actor Oscar. Who knows, he may even win this time.

DiCaprio is surrounded by some top-notch talent too. Naomi Watts plays Edgar’s longtime and ever-faithful secretary Helen Gandy; Armie Hammer is charming and sympathetic as his right-hand man and not-so-secret love interest, Clyde Tolson; and Dame Judi Dench plays his over-protective mother (who he lives with for a really long time). Their relationships with Edgar give the movie its emotional core.

Hoover is both hero and villain in J. Edgar. He’s obsessed with digging up and leveraging other people’s secrets, while harboring plenty of his own. He can creep you out one minute with his eavesdropping antics, and redeem himself the next as champion of things like fingerprinting and forensics to help fight crime. The FBI is his baby. He is consumed with protecting, promoting and growing the agency – which he led from its inception in 1935 until his death in 1977 – by whatever means necessary. And yes, that is DiCaprio playing J. Edgar across the decades.

It’s hard to know for sure just how close the movie comes to the truth about J. Edgar Hoover and his grip on power through eight presidents, three wars, and numerous high-profile cases from John Dillinger to the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. But the curious in general, and modern American history buffs in particular, will have fun wondering. And I, for one, will never look at the FBI Headquarters, a.k.a. the Hoover Building in Washington, DC quite the same way ever again. What an odd duck.

J. Edgar feels (and is) a bit long at two hours and seventeen minutes. It’s rated R but I’m not sure why. Apparently, for “brief strong language”. Whatever. It’s PG-13 in my book.

The assassination took place just as the bloody Civil War was winding down, and so the Northern sentiment was still strongly anti-Rebel and a battlefield mentality still prevailed. With Lincoln dead, Secretary of War Stanton (Kevin Kline) stepped into the power vacuum and decided that the trial should be in a military court with the outcome pretty much predetermined by a community reeling from the death of the President.  “Revenge,” as her lawyer puts it, “not justice.”  Surratt ran a boardinghouse, where John Wilkes Booth and the others met to plan the murder.  Surratt’s son was a part of the conspiracy but escaped, and so the film suggests, they were using her to get to him.

Aiken is a young Union officer, just back from the fighting, and returning to his law practice, when his boss lays the job of defending “the traitor” in his lap.  He doesn’t want to have anything to do with it, but comes to see that she is probably innocent, and that the powers that be are not interested in the truth, only in “getting this behind us.”  In fact, it was this case that forced the government to mandate civilian trials for non-combatants.

It is an interesting and little-known story, but The Conspirator suffers from a script that is a way too thinly veiled and heavy-handed political allegory.  Think Gitmo and Arab-Americans in post-9/11 America. I’m all for nice political dramas, but the “hammer over your head” approach just doesn’t do it for me.  Despite wonderful casting, the characters are mainly one-dimensional and the script totally lacking in nuance.  We all know Redford can direct a wonderful movie (Ordinary People), but he totally misses the mark on this one.

(An interesting footnote at the end tells us that after Aiken left the law, he went on to become the first editor in chief at The Washington Post.)

Pity the forgotten ones living in the shadows of the famous, the siblings who are mere footnotes in history. Who knew Mozart had a sister?  Her name was Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart, and she was five years older than Wolfie. When he was a baby she was the prodigy, but he soon stole the limelight.  Nannerl, as she was affectionately known, was probably an accomplished composer in her own right and by all accounts an incredible performer, but she was damned by virtue of being born female. Mozart’s Sister takes this kernel of a true story and builds a period drama around it.

In the fictionalized version, the Mozart family is on the road, wowing all the crowned heads in Europe. Wolfgang is the star, but Nannerl is an important part of the act. A broken axle forces them to stop at a convent, where almost 15-year-old Nannerl meets several French princesses, one of whom becomes her BFF.  And when the Mozarts arrive in Paris, Nan agrees to deliver a love letter to the princess’s beau. But as an unknown woman she cannot meet up with him because the beau is hanging out with the recently widowed Dauphin (Crown Prince), and so the intrigue begins.  Nannerl dresses as a boy, delivers the letter, and strikes up a friendship with the Dauphin.

Meanwhile, she wants to be a composer like Wolfie, but Dad tells her she has no talent and anyway, she’s a girl and girls don’t do that. He won’t even let her continue to play the violin because it is not ladylike and she is fast approaching marriageable age. But BFF Dauphin thinks she has talent and asks her/him to write him something, giving her the praise she craves, (and there is a bit of a romantic subplot with the two of them.)

Mozart’s Sister is an interesting if not terribly exciting period drama. I think Mainstream Chick would fall asleep, but much of the music is wonderful and the actors are all quite good. The girl who plays Nannerl (Marie Féret) is the director’s (René Féret) daughter. In the end though the message is sad and maddening — yet another talented artist was marginalized simply for having two X chromosomes.  You have to wonder what great things might have been written had her father and her time not worked against her. I don’t think you need to run out to see it in a theater, but when it comes to Netflix, it is definitely worth a look.

In French with Subtitles

(There have been several books about Nannerl in the past couple of years, but this is not an adaptation.)

Moneyball

Pitt plays Billy Beane, a former player-turned-general manager of the Oakland A’s who must rebuild the team – on a shoestring budget – after its star players are poached by baseball’s wealthier franchises. Forced to think outside the box, Beane recruits a nerdy but numbers-savvy Yale grad, Peter Brand (Hill), to help him fill the roster. Brand makes his picks based on a sophisticated computer-generated analysis of attainable (i.e. cheap) players who know how to get on base. Everything else becomes secondary, or totally inconsequential.

The computer-model approach doesn’t exactly sit well with the team’s old-school scouts or its manager, Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman). But they don’t have much choice but to go along – and bite their tongues when the strategy starts to work. Cue the montage/highlight reel as the A’s embark on an unprecedented 20-game win streak!

The premise would sound like a non-starter if not for the fact that it’s based on a true story, as told in the 2003 book, “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game” by Michael Lewis, the same guy who wrote “The Blind Side.”  Moneyball doesn’t have the same emotional pull as The Blind Side, but it does raise some interesting questions about salaries and statistics and what goes into building a championship team in the modern sports world. Who am I kidding? All I really cared about was the chemistry and clever banter between Pitt and Hill. Their relationship makes the movie– especially for the non-baseball aficionado. Pitt is ruggedly handsome (in a Robert “The Natural” Redford sort of way) and Hill is truly endearing as Beane’s unlikely sidekick. Let’s go A’s!

When he shows up to claim his place at the village school, he is initially turned away for not having pencils and an exercise book. When he returns with those, he is turned away for not having a school uniform. But when he shows up in an adult facsimile of the uniform, pencils and book in hand, the head teacher Jane agrees to let him have a chance. Sitting in the cramped classroom surrounded by 5 and 6-year-olds Maruge begins his education.

But as he learns, he flashes back to his earlier life. And that is what gives this movie its depth. Maruge fought with the Mau Mau against the British to end their colonial rule of Kenya. He was captured and tortured and his family was murdered. I will warn you that some of these scenes are brutal, but they are necessary to this man’s story. He is in essence one of the founders of modern Kenya, and yet he is being forced to beg for an education.

Maruge is initially greeted by the kids with a wary eye, but soon he is playing and teaching them about what freedom really means and some of the scenes with the kids are so touching. But his presence in the school creates problems for the wonderful head teacher Jane when her superiors think he is taking a seat that should be for a 5-year-old, and the villagers are all disturbed that an old man is going to school.

And soon word leaks out to the big city and before you know it, the press is all over the story of an 84-year-old first grader. And this too creates problems for Maruge and Jane. People think he is being paid for his story and try to get money from him and the school. The powers that be decide he should go to the adult education center farther away, but one visit convinces him that the school with children is where he needs to be. When push comes to shove, he makes a trek to Nairobi and to the Ministry of Education where he strips down to show them the horrific scars he earned to pave the way for their freedom. He is there to save the job of the teacher he respects, but also to put the bureaucrats in their place. He may be old, he may limp because the British cut off a couple of his toes, but he still has a fighting spirit for what matters.

This is a truly uplifting movie. I would recommend The First Grader for everyone. It is not your usual story or your usual location. It has great music and wonderful acting. You’ll learn some African history. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. And you will be glad to have seen it.

Working Chicks of the World Unite! And get yourselves down to the cinema. You’ve probably never heard of a woman named Rita O’Grady or the town of Dagenham, but if you are making a decent living as a woman, you owe her and her motley group of sisters a huge “thank you.” Made in Dagenham is a wonderful little film about a very important moment in women’s history. It is based on the true story of the ladies who sewed seat covers for Ford Motor Company in Dagenham, England in 1968, and fought to get equal pay for equal work. And yes, it is sort of a British Norma Rae, but it is much more fun.

The catalyst for their action is when Ford downgrades their status to “non-skilled” machinists and their pay grade with it. This insult moves them to strike and ultimately to begin a movement for equal pay for women in all jobs. At the center of it is Rita O’Grady, a regular woman who becomes extraordinary as their accidental leader. When she takes the women on strike, it reverberates across the company and ultimately shuts down the whole operation. You can’t make cars without seats after all. And before you know it, Henry Ford II himself is on the horn with the Prime Minister trying to strong-arm him into forcing the girls back to work.

But (un)fortunately the PM has appointed a woman as Employment Secretary and she is more than willing to hear out the women on the issue. By the end the women get what they asked for and England has an Equal Pay law that the rest of the Western world soon follows.

Sally Hawkins is wonderful playing Rita, a very ordinary working class woman who stands up for what is right. Miranda Richardson is just right as the “girl in the boys club” Secretary Castle who also has to fight against the men’s blatant sexism of the time in her high position. And Bob Hoskins is perfect as the ladies’ very sympathetic union rep who is on their side from the beginning because as he explains, he was raised by a single mom and understands how hard it is to make a living when you’re paid half what the men make for the same work.

Unlike Norma Rae, Made in Dagenham is visually engaging with its 60s hairstyles, mod clothes and breezy pop music. One of the factory girls even shows up one day to work in the newest style – hot pants! The women are a diverse and fun and the story while “important” is interwoven with their personal lives and struggles. At the end, it is a total feel good movie. I recommend it for every kind of chick out there.

(***SOAP BOX***) I am still amazed that it was only 40 years ago that women were treated so much like second class citizens. I think that is part of the attraction of movies like this and television shows like Mad Men. Sure we still haven’t totally gotten to “equal” but when you watch movies like this, you count your lucky stars.

(Warning – You may not understand every word because cause some of those chicks have really strong accents. I think you will enjoy it immensely nonetheless. )

What an oddly involving documentary! Exit Through the Gift Shop begins with a simple story. A Frenchman living in Los Angeles named Thierry Guetta loves to shoot video of everything he sees, shooting his life, family, friends and anyone who will let him. He discovers the culture of street art and begins documenting it first in France, then LA and then around the world. He follows lesser-known artists, ducking the cops late into the night, then hooks up with Shepard Fairey and finally the most intriguing of all street artists, London-based Banksy.

Seeing what and how these guys do what they do is fascinating and many including Banksy are only shown in shadowy hoods to protect their anonymity. (Not so for publicity loving Shepard Fairey.) But the most interesting part comes later. Having become buds with hot property Banksy, Thierry attends his star-studded show in Los Angeles, where his art sells for millions.

Suddenly all his footage of street artists is an attractive commodity and Thierry is finally convinced to cut a documentary. Unfortunately, he ends up with something that his hero Banksy deems unwatchable. So Banksy sends him back to LA to “do some art” while Banksy himself takes over the doc. Little does he know that Thierry who has never “done art” before will take him seriously. Or that the LA art scene will buy it.

Exit Through the Gift Shop is frequently funny and at times Thierry’s cluelessness is baffling, though he does get the last laugh. I was really happy to have been introduced to the art of Banksy, but the film leaves you questioning what is really behind the hype in the art world. Even if you aren’t an art lover, see it. It is the strangest rags to riches tale you’ll see any time soon.

(Note: There is a lot of talk that the entire film is an elaborate hoax dreamt up by Banksy. Time will tell. Or not.)

And just for fun here are a few of the artists you’ll see in the film.

Mark Wahlberg is a knockout as boxer-on-the-rise “Irish” Micky Ward. But it’s Christian Bale who really steals the show as Micky’s half-brother and trainer, Dicky Ecklund, a former boxer himself whose addiction to crack cocaine threatens to sink his own life and career – and possibly Micky’s too.

The women of The Fighter are powerhouses in their own right. Melissa Leo (from Homicide: Life on the Street) is absolutely amazing as Micky’s mother and manager. She is the matriarch of a large Irish brood near Boston that closes ranks around Micky and Dicky when “outsiders” like Micky’s girlfriend Charlene (Amy Adams) intrude on their dysfunctional family dynamic.

Melissa Leo

Amy Adams

For some reason, I didn’t expect to like Adams (Enchanted, Doubt, Junebug) in this movie, but she more than holds her own. I just hope that Adams and Leo don’t cancel each other out in the “best supporting actress” category come awards time. They are both very good.

The Fighter is ultimately a gritty feel-good movie that will surely draw comparisons to Rocky (the first one – not two through six!), Cinderella Man, Ali, Raging Bull and whatever other boxing films may come to mind. But that’s okay. The genre lends itself to tales of inspiration, redemption, guts and glory. And this movie has all those things. Thankfully it’s not too heavy on the blood and gore, and there’s enough comic relief to balance the intensity. Sure, The Fighter has some elements of predictability that can’t be avoided when you’re dealing with a screenplay based on a true story, real-life characters (in every sense of the word), and a well-documented journey toward a championship match. But overall, I am firmly in The Fighter’s corner.