My Movie Season Begins

Now that the the 2011-12 TV season is over, I've finally have enough time to start making a dent on my Netflix queue (although I give credit to the USA/TNT-esque cable networks for trying to create better original content for their summer seasons).

The first film I viewed was "The Iron Lady," which is the Margaret Thatcher biopic. Margaret Thatcher is one of those historic figures that I have hugely conflicting views on. The feminist in me cheers for the fact that Britain's longest-running Prime Minister is a woman. The political side of me strongly disagrees with her conservative views on privatization, taxes and industrialization (although she did vote for legalizing homosexuality and abortion). At the end of the day, the movie lover needed to see what the buzz was all about. Meryl Streep won the "Best Actress" Oscar (along with countless others) for her portrayal of Thatcher. So it should be of no surprise when I say her performance is amazing. She encompasses both the younger, ambitious Thatcher, as well as the senile elderly ex-Prime Minister. As for the actual film, I wasn't a giant fan. The primary focus seemed to be on her old age and dementia. The film just skims her background growing up and the reason she became so interested in politics. From there, it was a series of brief flashbacks of her rise to power and battle to find her place in a man's world. The Falklands War, one of the key moments of her career, was covered in only a few minutes. Overall, I felt it was a movie of missed opportunities but Streep is perfection as always.

The next movie up was "J. Edgar," the biopic of J. Edgar Hoover, who started and ran the F.B.I. for almost 50 years until his death in 1972. This movie paralleled with many elements of "The Iron Lady." We meet Hoover as an old man, dictating to a series of younger agents. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Hoover, which seems to be him simply reprising his Howard Hughes role from "The Aviator." Naomi Watts, Judi Dench and Armie Hammer make up the other leads and pretty much only parts of Hoover's personal life. I feel like this movie ran into issues because there's so many interesting conspiracies about Hoover and the FBI that they didn't know what to focus on. They ended up focusing on the the debate if Hoover was gay or not, which has never been proven either way. The movie doesn't leave any room for guessing by clearly drawing the line between Hoover and his close friend, heir and associate director of the FBI, Clyde Tolson. I wasn't particularly impressed with this movie as well.

Lastly was a movie I knew was going to be bad going into it. It was"W.E." and it was written, directed and produced by Madonna. Need I say more? Shockingly, it didn't star Madonna though. However, she did decide to take one of the most beautiful, real life romances and massacre it. The movie centers around the historic, romantic scandal of Prince Edward VIII, who gave up his crown to be with American twice-divorcee Wallis Simpson. Madonna paralleled this story with the modern tale of a woman obsessed with that story of romance, who's trapped in a cold and abusive marriage. The movie tries to force similarities in story lines, which makes the moves from one decade to another very forced. This film won a Golden Globe for "Best Original Song," by who else, Madonna. I would avoid watching this movie and read one of the many novels about the iconic couple.