“The Iron Lady” – The abridged Margaret Thatcher

Dir. Phyllida Lloyd
(2011, PG-13, 105 min)

The Iron Lady plays like a 105-minute trailer for a ten-hour miniseries about British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. At times it seems to be told entirely in montages and exposition, moving briskly through the 20th century, covering a little bit of everything but not revealing much of anything. Dealing with Thatcher’s upbringing in World War II-era England, her rise to power, her marriage to Denis Thatcher (Jim Broadbent), her physical and mental decline, and so on, and so on, and so on, the film skips like a stone over the surface of her life, but in doing so achieves little more depth than a high school essay on British political history. It would have been better to narrow the story down to a particular period and invest it with details we couldn’t as easily learn from Wikipedia.

“Fantastic Mr. Fox” – Chickens, run

Dir. Wes Anderson
(2009, PG, 87 min)
★ ★ ★

Fantastic Mr. Fox is like Chicken Run for hipsters. Directed and co-written by Wes Anderson, he of hyper-ironic fare like The Royal Tenenbaums and The Darjeeling Limited, it takes the Roald Dahl novel and coats it with a layer of laid-back cool. It’s too glib by half, surrounding emotional or energetic scenes with ones that are so detached they don’t feel like anyone’s playing for keeps. George Clooney voices Mr. Fox with Danny Ocean’s slick nonchalance; you can hear the smirk in his dialogue.

“Julie & Julia” – Just desserts

Dir. Nora Ephron
(2009, PG-13, 123 min)
★ ★ ½

My food metaphors are rusty, but I’ll give it a shot. Julie & Julia is sweet. Too sweet. It’s apple pie dipped in honey, drizzled in caramel, and injected with high fructose corn syrup. What it needs is a touch of the tart, salty, or savory. Written and directed by sugar specialist Nora Ephron (Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail), with an extra dollop of cutesy meringue by composer Alexandre Desplat, it makes Chocolat look like No Country for Old Men.

Academy Awards 2009: Predicting the Winners (Acting)

BEST ACTOR:
Nominees: Richard Jenkins (The Visitor); Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon); Sean Penn (Milk); Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button); Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)

Winner: Sean Penn
After Mickey Rourke won the Golden Globe and delivered his touching speech, it appeared that momentum might have been shifting away from early favorite Sean Penn to the Comeback Kid. Penn’s victory at SAG put him back out front, but this is a tight two-man race.

Penn has other factors working in his favor. First, he plays a real person. Oscar is a sucker for stars transforming themselves for lofty biopics: Forest Whitaker (Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland), Helen Mirren (Elizabeth II in The Queen), Marion Cotillard (Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Truman Capote in Capote), Jamie Foxx (Ray Charles in Ray), Adrien Brody (Wladyslaw Szpilman in The Pianist), and so on. Second, Milk has widespread Academy support that The Wrestler doesn’t have: eight nominations, including Best Picture. But watch out for Rourke if voters decide that it’s too early for another coronation for Penn, who won this award just five years ago for Mystic River.

“Doubt”

Dir. John Patrick Shanley
(PG-13) ★ ★ ★ ½

John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, based on his Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning play, develops powerful subtext without having to call attention to it. There are hidden truths under the surface of what the characters say and do. We can see the shadows lurking in the nuances of the screenplay and in the performances of the fine ensemble. Father Brendan Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) doesn’t seem innocent; he is too cagey and indirect in his denials of wrongdoing. Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep) is certain that he is a child molester, and she is certain because she saw him grab a boy by the wrist. Such slight evidence for such a serious charge — for her as well, there is more than meets the eye.