the leading man is my tpye

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

It seems we can't just can't have a normal biographical movie anymore without flashbacks. The flashback style is done for the purpose of showing us how events in someone's past effected their later decisions. Seeing the retired senile Margaret Thatcher was really unnecessary to this film. Can you imagine a Reagan biography starting out with a senile Reagan not knowing he is no longer president and talking to dead people? Unfortunately the senility scenes are needed so we can get to know the character of Marget Thatcher because the main biography part is poorly done with an over abundance of "red meat" sound bites.To make matters worse, the film then employs this technique during the flashback so there is a flashback within the flashback.I liked the young Margaret Roberts (Alexandra Roach) growing up in a man's world where the expectations of women were to stay out of business and politics. Her bucking the system was inspirational and it would have been a better film had we seen more of this and less of Margaret thinking her husband was still alive.The meat of the film picks up when she is the Education Secretary of the conservative party. England is facing a union strike crippling the nation. Marget doesn't like her party's leadership and decides to run for the leader of the Conservative Party. She correctly places herself in the hands of professions who tweak her for national appeal, including working on her shrill voice...but she keeps the pearls.The movie relates to today. England was in a recession and people couldn't pay their mortgage. Margret wanted to cut government spending in the midst of a recession contrary to everyone else, including her own party who worries about re-election. I expected to see a "Paid for by Ron Paul" after that speech.For me, the film becomes watchable when Thatcher has to weigh her decision to go to war over the Falkland Islands. Streep gives us some wonderful performances. But when I see Matthew Marsh miscast as Alexander Haig, I have to ask, "What were they thinking?"I went into this film thinking "5 stars" but reality set in as they killed this film on the editing floor. Horrifically edited and badly written. Whose idea was it really to have Streep walk around in an old house coat with messed up hair looking acting like Edith Bunker? The scenes of Streep moving through a crowd of faces, speaking her thoughts was another idea that failed. The soundtrack during the file footage scenes was terrible. Streep had a few strong scenes, but not enough to save this film. My advice: read the book.No f-bombs, no sex, brief nudity on file footage.

"Iron Lady" opens with a CCTV - style view from above the counter of a convenience store where a frail -looking old lady in a mackintosh and headscarf is faffing around and muttering to herself as she buys a carton of milk. As the camera moves in we see that this is not in fact a frail old lady but Hollywood Great Meryl Streep pretending to be a frail old lady and bent double under the weight of facial prosthetics. She then pretends tp shuffle along the street,looking like nothing more than Julie Walters pretending to be a frail,mad old lady. And so it goes on,Miss Streep in varying degrees of Margaret Thatcher make - up and giving a technically assured but mannered and rather cold performance that is bound to please her many admirers. This is mainly about Mrs T's sad descent into dementia in her later years and viewed as such is competently but in no way outstandingly made. Miss Streep may look like Margaret Thatcher but she fails capture her.That is left to the estimable Miss Alexandra Roach who captures Margaret Roberts in her somewhat gauche persona,a blank page to a certain extent to be a willing subject of the Svengali - like Denis. As she loses touch with reality she sees her late husband as a clownish figure in a continuing fantasy and the film ends with Denis walking out of the door in his socks. How much of "The Iron Lady" is truth I do not pretend to know and it is unlikely to persuade pro or anti factions to change their opinions of this ultimately sad figure. Personally I consider the film not to be as good as its proponents nor as bad as its detractors. If you are a Streepomane you will love it.

"Thatcher: The Frail Years" seems both exploitative, and undeservedly sentimental...It's not that it doesn't cover the bad stuff - but the fact that it takes the form of an elderly lady experiencing a long dark night of the soul affords her a distance from her most famous battles that is entirely unwarranted.She suffered... and maybe what goes around comes around - but other people are still suffering from the effects of her policies, and they don't all get a movie of their own.It's all a bit shallow, and smacks of (very fine) actors playing dress- up, instead of the immersive experience it could and SHOULD have been.

I think it would have been very interesting to see how this film would have turned out had it been made my men. While Phyllida Lloyd and Abi Morgan call attention to Thatcher's gender, they ultimately don't make much of a statement about it. This is a poor choice considering the highly gendered nature of the political arena she is playing in. While I certainly do appreciate that attention paid to the subject - you can find countless films about male political and historical figures; women, not so much - I wish it had been done better. Gender seems to stump many filmmakers when it comes to women and politics, as demonstrated by Pablo Larrain's Jackie. As soon as the woman is not the supportive wife, people don't really know what to make of her. I hope that the lack of good features about women in politics doesn't stop future filmmakers from trying to make more films showcasing important women.