This was a great weekend for movies. On Saturday we watched "My Week with Marilin" (2011) and I loved it. I give it 4 ****. We also watched "Anonymous" (2011) which I give 5*****. "My Week with Marilyn" is about Marilyn Monroe making a movie in England with Lawrence Olivier in the 1950's. "Anonymous" is about how Lord Oxford wrote Shakespeare's plays and used Shakespeare as a "front man". This is based upon the "Oxfodien" theory of Shakespeare scholars.It is hard to understand how Shakespeare, who was not a nobleman and had never been to Italy would have the knowledge to write these plays. In any case, it was a fascinating complicated movie that challenged the mind and I loved it. Both movies were from my Netflix account.
On Sunday we went to Tinseltown to see an actual "double feature" ( we only paid one price for both movies) of the "Iron Lady and "The Artist" (2011) 3 ***. The first was the "Iron Lady which I loved and brought tears to my eyes. One of my heroes is Margret Thatcher the first female British Prime Minster and the greatest since Winston Churchill.
My favorite part of the movie was the retelling of her role in the Falkland War against Argentina. At the time I followed the war intently and would get reports from the BBC on my short wave radio and had our extra bedroom made up into a "war room" with maps and the location of ships etc.
The sad part of the movie is that most of it is told in flashbacks from the near past as she is declining in mind as most of us do as we reach "the end". Unless we die a sudden death it happens to many of the greats such as Reagan and Churchill out of public view. As a reader of biographies I know that we all don't "live happily every after" which we were led to believe in the fairy tales of our youth.The end is often very bitter sweet. My wife was bothered by her conversations with her dead husband who appears like a ghost. I viewed it more as a dramatic devise to tell the story .... and what a story it is.
Her speeches on the problems of the U.K. are right out of what is happening in Greece and the United States today. The enslavement of us all by debt and the power of the "nanny state". Her battle with the leaders of her own Conservative party to push back on the "road to serfdom" or go along in a competent moderate managed way because that is the "politically smart" thing.
Meryl Streep deserves her Academy Award for Best Actress for playing Thatcher.
The "Iron Lady and "Anonymous" will be on my DVD buy list.
Not on my DVD list is "The Artist"(2011) 3 *** winner of the Academy Award for "Best Picture". I thought it was a trite story told better in "Singing in the Rain" and I kept anticipating what was going to happen and kept looking at my watch and wondering how the vote was going in Puerto Rico and how many delegates Romney would get. I have watched many real silent pictures such as John Wayne's the "Big Trail" and some Directed by John Ford such at "The Iron Horse" which are much better. I did like the dog in "The Artist"
