The Prom

The new musical The Prom is kind of like the Pete Buttigieg of musicals, which is too harsh to Buttigieg, whom I generally like (and preferred over the eventual nominee), but I get why a lot of people don't care for him. I'm not the first one who has thought of similarities between Buttigeg and The Prom; Zachary Stewart wrote about the resemblance of the two last year, but Stewart and I seem to have come to different conclusions. At first I thought Stewart's article was meant to be an insult—both Buttigieg and The Prom are hardworking yet bland and try to be really appreciated. Ultimately, however, they're gay stories presented mainly for straight, centrist audiences.

In fact, centrism is one of the major flaws of this film. The Prom, directed by Ryan Murphy and written for the screen by Chad Beguelin and Bob Martin (who wrote the show with Matthew Sklar), is a movie that likes to think of itself as being self-aware—it is, after all, a show that pokes fun at celebrities embracing activism to help a lesbian student in order to improve their image and brand—and yet it's not as self-aware as it would like to be. Its satire falls flat, and its message of love and acceptance comes across as smug, superior, and outdated. The clearest example of this is undoubtedly the big solo by Trent, the actor in between gigs whose over-beaten joke is that he went to Julliard. In the song, Trent (pretty creepily) stalks a bunch of the conservative teenagers at the mall to sing a song called "Love Thy Neighbor", where he points out all the hypocrisy and absurdity of religious people cherrypicking Bible verses to boost their political agenda. In the long history of arguing over this issue, pointing out the parts in the Bible that would send most of us to Hell has never worked to convince anyone to support queer people. The song, with on-the-nose lyrics including lines like "love trumps all," comes across as if Aaron Sorkin in the late 90s had written it.

The character at the center of this story is Emma (Jo Ellen Pellman), a gay teenager in Edgewater, Indiana, who, like most teenagers, wants to go to her high school's prom. However, the PTA, led by Mrs. Green (Kerry Washington), eventually cancels the prom to prevent Emma and her girlfriend (who happens to be the closeted Alyssa Greene, Mrs. Greene's daughter, and is played by Ariana DeBose) from attending. Emma, though, has powerful allies in her corner, one of whom is the principal (Keegan-Michael Key, whose singing is quite good), and the other four (with more questionable motives) are washed-up Broadway actors.

Two of these stars are Dee Dee Allen (Meryl Streep) and Barry Glickman (James Corden), who have just closed a show on Broadway in which they played Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt. The biting reviews of their performances finish them. Lacking the will to crawl out of such disappointment, Dee and Barry, while washing away their sorrows in alcohol with chorus girl Angie Dickson (Nicole Kidman) and Trent Oliver (the actor in between gigs played by Andrew Rannells), stumble upon the anti-lesbian controversy in Indiana on Twitter. Now they have a publicity stunt to save them! So the four of them decide to make their way west to Indiana to demand that this small, backward town change its ways, whether Emma wants their help or not. This cynical, haughty, misguided, fake-woke behavior of the foursome is a major driving point of the story, and in better hands, it could have gone somewhere. Instead, we get unbelievable character arches, boring songs, and fanciful embroidery pretending to be critical art. 

Like Love, Simon two years before it, the place and time of this story is peculiar. GenZ is the most progressive generation alive, and yet this movie would have us believe that the entire student body is united in intolerance toward Emma. Don't get me wrong: It's no question that young queer people still face terrible challenges (like homelessness, for example, in which LGBTQ youth are 120% more likely than non-LGBTQ youth to suffer from; Emma is one of them after she is disowned by her parents), and not being allowed to attend prom with their dates is certainly one such challenge. There is a long history of students fighting for this right, dating back to 1980 in a court case called Fricke v. Lynch in which the court ruled that school bans on same-sex couples attending prom is a violation of students' freedom of speech. Nine years before The Prom debuted on Broadway, a school in Mississippi cancelled its prom instead of allowing a lesbian couple to attend. In a situation similar to what happens in The Prom, a secret dance was planned by the parents instead, and the two gay students were not invited. A similar controversy happened last year in the exact same school district. 

So, why not have the film take place either several decades ago or in present-day Mississippi? It seems like a trivial thing to criticize the movie for, but it's also something I kept thinking about. Putting this story in a modern-day, middle-class Indiana suburb makes what happens in The Prom feel hyperbolic. Believe it or not, Mississippi isn't Indiana (support for same-sex marriage in Indiana was sixteen points higher than in Mississippi, according to polling conducted three years ago). There are so many troubling stories of queer students being discriminated against at schools and proms across the entire country in cases that could have served as the civil rights issue for the film, but an entire school board and student body working to unleash, with surgical precision, gratuitous amounts of humiliation on a school's apparently only out lesbian student in present-day Indiana was not believable to me. 

Even if the above points didn't bother me, there's not a whole lot to praise in The Prom, with its acting in particular being a disappointment. It wouldn't be fair to say that Pellman, who makes her debut here, provides a one-dimensional performance in her role as the kind, persevering Emma, but for a character who is meant to be going through a variety of different emotions and turmoils, Pellman puts forward more or the less the same expression and note in every scene she's in. It could be that this was done deliberately to be Emma's mask in the face of such hatred, but I didn't get that impression. 

Much of the other discussion about the acting has centered on Corden's performance, with articles in IndieWire, Yahoo News, and Buzzfeed all devoting ink to what many viewers will likely take away from his acting: a straight actor leaning heavily into stereotypes, resulting in an unseemly display of gay-face. I agree with these critiques, and I wish that Corden had known better. (I do think he can sing, though.) The controversy aside, his chemistry with Streep mostly works, and she's essentially as good as she's ever been, but she's never really given a bad performance, has she? I just wish she had found a better movie to be in this winter than a feel-good yet phony musical in which the songs all sound the same.

The Prom is the type of movie that feels two decades too late. I had low expectations for The Prom, and they were met. 

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Stop, It's Oscar Time: The Best Movies of 2017

Hey there, cats and kittens.

After an awful year for Hollywood and the entertainment industry but a pretty darn good one for films, 2017 showed that Hollywood has continued to inch its way in the right direction in terms of more diversity in film, better visual effects, and terrific (albeit sometimes unoriginal) storytelling.

And so, here are the best films of 2017 (and, as usual, some overrated ones), just in time for the upcoming Academy Awards:


10. Get Out
Before I get started, I have to note that Get Out is basically tied with It, the coming-of-age Stranger Things-before-there-was-Stranger Things adaptation of Stephen King's famous novel about a killer clown. Both are horror films that weren't all that scary, both made a ton of money, and both will have long legacies. But I'm so opposed to ties on top-ten lists, that after some back and forth, I decided to put Get Out at number ten and have It as an honorable mention. Why is Get Out here and not It? While I'm impartial to coming-of-age films, I really liked the way Get Out seemed so fresh and original, while It is based on a popular book from the 80s that was made into a popular TV miniseries in the 90s that inspired a recent hit Netflix show and will now have a sequel.

I feel fortunate that I knew as little as possible about Get Out before watching it. You should, too (if you're one of five people who hasn't seen the movie.) So I won't go into the plot. All I'll add is that Get Out is the movie I'm rooting for for Best Picture (as well as Best Original Screenplay), mainly because it's a horror movie, and the last (and only) horror movie that won Best Picture was Silence of the Lambs in 1992. I enjoyed most of the performances (especially Daniel Kaluuya, Bradley Whitford, and Catherine Keener), and I appreciated how writer-director Jordan Key Peale put a unique spin on the villains. This is a very intelligent and astute movie. There are not many films quite this clever.

9. Battle of the Sexes
A biographical film about the most famous tennis match of the 20th century, Battle of the Sexes works on three different levels: it works as an exhilarating, though at times clichéd, sports film; it works as a loud-and-proud movie about gender equality; and it works as a delicate and mature same-sex love story. I can't think of another movie that does all three so easily.

Like Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris' directorial debut (a little movie called Little Miss Sunshine), this undoubtedly is a crowd-pleaser. If that's not you're kind of movie, you might want to stay away. Beyond that, it's more than challenging to not see the Battle of the Sexes tennis match of 1973 as a parallel to a lot of what happened during the U.S. presidential election of 2016. If you're not interested in re-opening those wounds, you also might want to avoid this movie.

Not to say that there aren't any problems with the movie (like it's use of a "magic gay man"), but it's still one of the year's best. It's certainly one of Emma Stone's best performances, and if you can understand that Steve Carell is meant to be as obnoxious as possible, you'll love his performance as well. They're supported by a big cast that includes Sarah Silverman, Bill Pullman, Andrea Riseborough, Alan Cumming, Natalie Morales, Austin Stowell, and Tom Kenny.

8. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
First, the elephant in the room: I am aware of how problematic this movie is. While I am not sure I would agree that it is a racist movie, it is certainly a movie that is about as tone-deaf about race and racism in the United States as there can be. I can only conclude that writer-director Martin McDonagh, an Irishman, probably didn't think too carefully about how some situations and characters (and unnecessary character arcs) would be received in the U.S., especially among minority communities.

Some have defended him by calling the criticism "alarmist". I'm not sure if that's a fair word to use. The concerns about the movie are genuine, but there is a lot to like about the movie. Why do I like the movie? I loved Frances McDormand's performance; it may be even better than her iconic role in Fargo. In a year in which Wonder Women wasn't nominated for anything, we should celebrate tough, bad-ass women as much as the Academy will let us. (Yes, I didn't care for Wonder Women, but I recognize that everyone else on the planet did. And if a major blockbuster that made tons of money and was adored by fans and critics alike can't get nominations, I don't know what can.) I like the other actors in the cast as well, mainly Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson,

The backlash against Three Billboards is most likely justified. I liked this movie, and I really hope McDormand wins another Oscar; I just wish McDonagh had thought more carefully before making some of the choices he made.

7. The Post
While it's impossible not to watch Battle of the Sexes and think about the events of 2016, it is also impossible to watch The Post and not think of the events of 2017. This movie loudly trumpets the role of the media and cautions against a reactionary executive. Meryl Streep, in her first performance in a Steven Spielberg-directed film, is legendary Washington Post head Katherine Graham. Hanks reunites with Spielberg in his performance as editor Bill Bradlee. Hanks' performance is a bit too, well, Hanksy. (Do we really need him playing every kind of Jimmy Stewart-esque character there is? Apparently yes, because he's been cast as Mr. Rogers). Streep's performance, however, is exceptional, as always. How easy she continues to make this all look. Like other movies on this list, there is a great supporting cast: Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk, Bradley Whitford, Bruce Greenwood, Matthew Rhys, Alison Brie, Jesse Plemons, David Cross, and Michael Stuhlbar.

Of the three most recent Steven Spielberg-directed somber historical motion pictures (the other two being Lincoln and Bridge of Spies), The Post is the best. While there is the uncomfortable controversy regarding the fact that this is The Post and not The Times, meaning the filmmakers exaggerated the role of the Washington Post in releasing the Pentagon Papers while not giving the New York Times enough credit, I was willing to overlook it, but it probably doesn't help its Oscar chances. (For the record, I can't figure out why they didn't just make it The Times. Perhaps because Graham and Bradlee are such well-known figures.)

If you are concerned that Speilberg and frequent Trump critics Streep and Hanks are going in for an unabashedly pro-media, anti-fascist film, rest assured that this very much is a bipartisan critique on the U.S. presidents and their administrations that repeatedly lied to the American people about the situation in Vietnam. That list includes both Democrats and Republicans: Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon (who is featured throughout the film through the use of those infamous tapes).

6. Coco
Pixar's first musical is a grand celebration of Mexican culture that is so magnificent, it has become the highest grossing film in Mexican history. Anthony Gonzalez plays 12-year-old Miguel, an aspiring musician in a family that has banned music. Miguel runs away, and through an accidental bit of magic, he finds himself in the Land of the Dead during Day of the Dead. Racing against time to avoid being permanently stuck there, Miguel finds his ancestors (who hate music as much as his living relatives), a helpless musician named Héctor (voiced by Gael Garcia Bernal) longing to be remembered by the living, and one of the most famous singers in history named Ernesto de la Cruz (voiced by Benjamin Bratt).

Coco starts off with lots of spirit, and then sort of drags a bit in the second act. However, that's when the music starts, and man, does Gonzalez have an incredible singing voice. The third act is where most of the film's heart is, and it's one of the most pro-family messages in a while, even if it lays it on a bit thick. The images of the Land of the Dead (particularly that gorgeous bridge) are some of Pixar's most stunning, just as beautiful as the stuff seen in WALL-E, Up, and Inside Out. Aside from its lame title (you can read here the controversy behind why it was changed), this is an awesome film for movie-goers of all ages.

5. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
The most controversial (and yet one of the best) Star Wars films ever, The Last Jedi has proved that this franchise is here to stay for a while. To some, this is bad news. As David Chen of Slash Filmcast pointed out, there were three types of fans who were disappointed by the movie: the alt-right crowd angry at all the diversity in the newer films of this franchise, the hard-core fans who feel writer-director Rian Johnson is overstepping his bounds with his creativity, and film nerds who were picking apart the film's plot holes. (Nobody wants to be in the first group; everyone wants to be in the third.)

Whatever. I loved this film. I loved its meta quality. I loved the final performance of the late, far-above-great Carrie Fisher. I loved the cagey, alienated, disillusioned portrayal of Luke Skywalker by Mark Hamill. I adored a reunion scene that I won't elaborate on because I think it's too soon to spoil. I was so impressed by the acting of Daisey Ridley, who continues to inspire young girls around the world, and Adam Driver, whose portrayal of the malicious Kylo Ren continues to remind us of the limitations of Millenials. I was thrilled from start to finish (save for that lame casino scene), and I applauded the performances of Laura Dern, Oscar Isaac, and others. Johnson took some big swings and mostly hit it out of the park, regardless of what the three types of the agitated had to say.

As I wrote in my review, there will come a time when fans tire of this franchise. Star Wars is not Marvel, another Disney-owned studio, with enormous longevity. But for now, considering how wonderful the three most recent movies have been, why stop now?

4. Kedi

A cat in Hagia Sophia in Istanbul during my 2011 trip. They're everywhere.

Who would've thought that a Turkish documentary about the feral cats of Istanbul would be so entertaining? And yet, it is. It goes without saying that this is a must-see for cat lovers, but even if you hate cats, you'll probably like this movie. As one man in the documentary says, you can't really trust people who don't like cats.

This documentary takes us through the streets of Istanbul, one of the world's great cities. And while we meet lots of different common folks, the main focus is on Istanbul's cats. As someone who's traveled there, I can affirm to you that these creatures are indeed ubiquitous, and unlike most places, they really don't seem terrified of humans.

This documentary, directed by Ceyda Torun, will tug at your heart and make you impressed by the resourcefulness of these felines. Her camera takes a very active approach to following them around and telling their stories. This movie is the most surprising must-see of last year.

3. The Big Sick
The Big Sick is one of the very best romantic comedies in a long time. Based on the real-life love story of comedian Kumail Nanjiani and writer Emily V. Gordon, Nanjiani plays himself (which is kind of weird), and Gordon is wonderfully played by Zoe Kazan. Among the supporting cast are Holly Hunter and Ray Romano as the parents of Emily; Zenobia Shroff, Adeel Akhtar, and Anupam Kher playing Kumail's family members; and Bo Burnham and Aidy Bryant as his comedian friends. All are fantastic. The first discussion over lunch Kumail has his Emily's parents at the hospital is probably the funniest scene of the year.

There's so much in this movie: comedians, love, family drama, interracial dating, and a health crisis to top it all off. I'm deeply disappointed that this movie didn't get more nominations, like for Best Picture, for example, though I am happy that Nanjiani and Gordon are nominated for Best Original Screenplay. In terms of acting, we've never really seen Nanjiani pull off stuff this dramatic, and Kazan is as charming and perfect as ever. You owe it to yourself to see this movie.

2. The Salesman
The second Best Foreign Language Film by Iranian director Asghar Farhadi (who did not attend last year's Oscar ceremony to protest Donald Trump's travel ban of Iranians entering the U.S.), The Salesman is yet another fantastic marriage of subtle tenseness and acute observations of the unique difficulties ordinary people face. Set among the backdrop of a local production of the play Death of a Salesman, this movie has all the ingredients of a great Farhadi thriller: toxic masculinity, suspicion, paranoia, and false choices. Like he did with A Separation, About Elly, and Le Passé, Farhadi has made a tense movie without including any typical Hollywood cliches. I greatly await his next motion picture, which will be his first Spanish film.

1. The Florida Project
The Florida Project is a masterpiece. Like Tangerine before it, Sean Baker finds atypical stories so worth telling. To paraphrase the fine folks at Pop Culture Happy Hour, this movie might seem like it's going to be "poverty porn" and overly didactic, but it isn't. I don't know how Baker and team managed to do a movie like that this way, but they did. Part of it may be due to the performances, which are perfect. With all due respect to Sam Rockwell's more ostentatious performance in Three Billboards, The Florida Project features probably Willem Dafoe's best performance yet, as the hotel manager and borderline babysitter for the hotel's kids and their parents. (I'm rooting for him to win the Oscar, though he's the underdog.) There are also so many other brilliant performances by unknown actors who for some reason have not been nominated for anything this awards season (especially Brooklynn Prince and Bria Vinaite as the daughter and mother, respectively, living in this low-rent hotel not far from Disney World). This movie is probably one of the best of the decade, and I cannot wait to see the next projects directed by Baker.

Honorable Mentions: The Disaster Artist, Thor: Ragnarok, The Lego Batman Movie, It, Call Me By Your Name


Fortunately, the films in my top ten show a list of diversity: The Florida Project features a diverse cast set in economic situations American films rarely feel comfortable detailing; The Big Sick features an interracial love story, and much of the cast members are Pakistani or Pakistani-American; Kedi and The Salesman are both foreign films from countries with majority-Muslim populations (Turkey and Iran, respectively); Coco celebrates Mexican culture and features a Latino cast and is co-directed by a Mexican-American; Star Wars: The Last Jedi is (controversially, for some stupid reason) probably the most diverse Star Wars movie ever; The Post certainly doesn't pass the Bechdel Test, but it does star Meryl Streep as Graham, a towering figure in American journalism; and finally, Battle of the Sexes features basically an all-white cast (except for Morales), but essentially half the cast is female (and of course, it's about one of the U.S.'s most celebrated gay athletes). Three Billboards has its controversies, but it is led by a strong woman playing a strong woman. And then of course, there's Get Out, which uniquely visualizes the U.S.'s problems with race.

I do hope Hollywood continues this trend.

Overrateds of the Year: Wonder Woman, God's Own Country, The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki, Columbus, Professor Marston & The Wonder Women, Okja, Marjorie Prime, The Square

Actor Who Was In Everything: Caleb Landry Jones (Get Out; American Made; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; The Florida Project)

Runner-Up: Domhnall Gleeson (Star Wars: The Last Jedi; Goodbye, Christopher Robin; American Made; mother!; Crash Pad)

Fireman of the Year: Christopher Plummer (All the Money In the World) (and special shout-out to Jack Matthews for giving Plummer that title)

Oscars:

Best Actress:
Who Will Win: Frances McDormand (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri)
Who Should Win: Frances McDormand (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri)

Best Actor:
Who Will Win: Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour)
Who Should Win: Timothée Chalomet (Call Me By Your Name)

Best Supporting Actress:
Who Will Win: Allison Janney (I, Tonya)
Who Should Win: Allison Janney (I, Tonya)

Best Supporting Actor:
Who Will (Probably) Win: Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri)
Who Should Win: Willem Dafoe (The Florida Project)

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Into the Woods

Once the familiar becomes strange, as Michael Sandel has said, things are never quite the same. So it is in Disney's adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's "Into the Woods." Here, the familiar becomes quite strange. I recall complaining to my theatre professor when my university put on a production of "Into the Woods" my freshman year that I didn't care for the sudden change in mood during the second act of the musical. But he and others convinced me of this necessity; strange is often quite good, and Disney, of all studios, has done a mostly good job of avoiding the "Disneyfication" of these famous stories like it did for practically a century.

"Into the Woods" is a musical featuring a variety of different fairy tales so juxtaposed with each other that one might be advised to take a copious amount of notes. There's the usual suspects: a little hungry girl with a red cape; Cinderella, slaving away at home for her terrible step-family; Jack, unable to help his mother because their cow will not produce any milk. But then there's something about a curse being placed on a house of a baker and his wife, or something like that. The plot is not too interesting. But the couple are forced to collect a series of items for a witch (Meryl Streep), who placed the curse, and so on their journey they come across all these characters.

Many of the musical numbers fall fairly flat in terms of interest, but there is something certainly peculiar about it all. Here, as our characters sing, the woods are just trees, and the trees are just woods; stay on the path, they may try, but something wicked surely will come. Little by little, we see these characters' stories becoming intertwined. Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford) embarks on her journey into the woods to bring some bread to Granny (who is sick in bed), and, as we all expect, she comes across a hungry wolf (Johnny Depp). Depp appears only in one sequence as the Wolf, ears pointed and tie undone, with long black claws. It's a pretty good scene, and despite the (mostly) unfair wave of recent criticism he has recently received, like when the Washington Post's Stephanie Merry called him a "51-year-old ham," it shows that Depp still has it. Is the sequence disturbing? Yes, but by now everyone knows the dark history of these old fairy tales and their didactic nature -- take a read to find out what really happens to Cinderella's stepsisters in the original Grimm stories.

The other actors are also quite good. I knew Meryl Streep and Anna Kendrick (Cinderella) could sing, but I had no idea Tracy Ullman (Jack's mother) and James Corden, who plays the baker, could as well. But the one who really is impressive is Captain Kirk himself -- Chris Pine, as Prince Charming, belts out "Agony" with co-star Billy Magnussen in one of the best scenes in the movie. Also giving good performances are Crawford and Daniel Huttlestone as Jack (of the "Beanstalk" story). (Huttlestone appeared in "Les Miserables" two years ago and Crawford makes her film debut here; she also played the title character in "Annie" in the Broadway revival.)

Job certainly well done to director Rob Marshall. We all knew he could get great singing from his actors from his previous movies, but beyond that he deserves credit for this incredible production design, especially its design by Dennis Gassner and Anna Pinnock, and visual effects team lead by Christian Irles, Matt Johnson, and Stefano Pepin. In addition to a nomination for Streep and the production design team, Colleen Atwood is deservedly nominated for her costumer design. This is truly one of the most visually impressive movies of the year, especially the sequences featuring the angry lady-giant, imaginably one of the more difficult moments to visualize. Beyond that, there might be some disappointment. There isn't quite as much thought as I think many people would want, and I don't think there's any way of being able to decipher if this is or isn't a parable about AIDS, as some have theorized the original musical is. Still, compared to many of the disappointing duds of December, "Into the Woods" is quite the treat.

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The Iron Lady

When we first meet Margaret Thatcher in "The Iron Lady," she is not commanding the British Navy into battle or lecturing her opponents or cabinet. She is not offering a lofty defense of the principles she so dearly believes in. Instead, she is quite old, sneaking out of the house to buy some milk, and returning home to complain about the price changes to her husband, Denis. The trouble is, Denis isn't there. He's dead, and has been for some years. As Britain is attacked by al-Qaeda, she shouts that Britain "must never give in to terrorists," but is brushed aside when someone asks if it's warm inside.

Do we really need these scenes of post-politician Thatcher, depicting her suffering from dementia? The scenes didn't strike me as insensitive so much as odd, reminiscent of the fantasy hospital scenes in "Angels in America" with Streep as a deceased Ethel Rosenberg haunting a dying Roy Cohn, but with Streep this time as the latter figure. If anything, they at least provide Streep with more opportunities to show just how committed she was to this role. So perhaps they are justified. But why the World War II flashbacks? Why the irrelevance? Why not have the other elements of the film match the perfect performance by Meryl Streep, instead of making them so lackluster?

Still, this movie is Meryl Streep's. We see Streep in a variety of different human qualities: ambition, arrogance, humility, fear, revenge, bitterness, peace. Forgive me for the cliche, but I had to frequently remind myself that I was watching Meryl Streep and not Margaret Thatcher. Streep's performances by now are so well-known: "Kramer vs. Kramer," "Manhattan," and "The Deer Hunter," "Silkwood," "A Cry in the Dark," "Sophie's Choice," "Out of Africa," "Postcards from the Edge," "Adaptation," "The Devil Wears Prada," "Mamma Mia!" and "Julie & Julia." If it were announced that she were to play Superman or James Bond I would not protest or question. Here it is impossible not to be captivated by her. And if Streep doesn't win, it will be a great tragedy.

As Thatcher she is the uncompromising enemy of compromise. We see her hallucinations turning frightening, as Denis (Jim Broadbent) is taunting her and encouraging (or provoking) her to drink more. We see her rise through parliament, where, if you were shocked by the "you lie!" moment several years ago in Congress, you should see a British Parliament session. (With all due respect to my British friends, why is there a man in a funny wig yelling "ord-ah! ord-ah!" if the politicians don't shut up?) The scenes with her as prime minister are more interesting, perhaps because it fits my typical liberal view of seeing Thatcher as a villain, and the scenes with her as an elder suffering do not. Anyway, it is easy to see this film through any prism you like. Conservatives, American and British alike, will appreciate the glory days of conservatism and the defense of free-market and tough foreign policy principles. Liberals, likewise, will get to see Thatcher as the villain they've always wanted; there's even a strange scene where she glides, whereas the gentlemen around her walk.

I could write for hours about Streep's performance, but unfortunately there are other aspects to this movie which must be discussed. Streep is directed by her "Mamma Mia!" director Phyllida Lloyd, who tries really hard, as do many other things in this film, but to no avail. Compare the non-linear storytelling of "We Need to Talk About Kevin," which is enigmatic and effective, to that of this movie, which seems formulaic, precisely what a movie like this shouldn't be. The make-up effects are exceptional, and the script is somewhat intelligent, and there are some unique shots, such as her first day at parliament, a drop of blue in a sea of dark suits. This is a movie that tries, but it simply either tries too hard or not hard enough.

Finally, the consensus seems to be now that there is no consensus on who will win this year's Best Actress award. The Oscars will likely use two biases against her: 1) the movie is mediocre at best and for that reason above all else she shouldn't get it, and 2) Meryl Streep is so good all the time that it's best to just give it to someone else this year.

Academy Awards, give the Oscar to her!

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