From Mary Burgan. Email her at mary[AT]borderstan.com.

The main alternative to this summer’s loud and often obnoxious blockbuster movies is a “Rom-Com,” also known as a film with pleasant characters that fall in love and end a plot happily.

Contemporary rom-coms follow this definition loosely, but with differences that identify them as current productions. The main characters are apt to be “youngish,” but not really  young. They’ve had several “relationships” already, and the issue for them is to sort out a bunch of relationships in the hope of finding one that will last, rather than to search for the “one and only.” And the one main complication seems to be the male figure’s lack of a real job.

The plot usually has some anti-hero, like Paul Rudd, Seth Rogan or Jason Segal trying to get his act together or to make a commitment to a much more together female like Cameron Diaz, Katherine Heigl or Jennifer Aniston. And it’s important that the characters are really, really hip — sassy and knowingly witty.

But contemporary rom-coms are like all the old-fashioned romances, in that they feature happy endings. Despite everything, the couple gets together in the end. For example, Ruby Sparks features an imaginary heroine with a wonderful Rom-Com ending.

Many viewers have found Celeste and Jesse Forever too depressing to rank as a true rom-com. The question is whether the couple in the film are sufficiently happy in the end. What if the expected marriage of the leading couples doesn’t come off? What if the resolution leaves them sad but wise? Are our desires for happy endings so strong that we demand the expected in our rom-coms?

I like Jesse and Celeste Forever because it takes the risk of bucking our desires and giving us an ending that only struggles to be happy. In the process, Rashida Jones shows herself as a wonderful actress, able to accommodate the film’s comic pathos with loveable humanity. Jones delivers a perfect rom-com revelation, even though it hurts. Throughout the film, you’ll laugh, but you’ll also cry.

Go see Jesse and Celeste Forever and tell us what you think.

Finally: Washington’s Film Festival —“DC Shorts”— is arriving in Washington on September 6, and lasting through the 16th. Check DCSHORTS.COM out for tickets, passes and film descriptions. Unless you’re a genuine film freak, you’ll have to choose only a few from among many clusters of offerings. They can be really short — ranging from 2 to 20 minutes—but they’re all going to be interesting, so take a chance!

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From Mary Burgan. Email her at mary[AT]borderstan.com.

The Movie Fan (me) has been on sick leave since May. She’s back now, thanking whatever Gods there be that she has had a good excuse to skip most of this summer’s blockbuster movies.

Not for her the repulsive roar of a new comic book transition to the screen at Gallery Place. She would rather call up a great movie like Despicable Me on stream or on Netflix  and enjoy its clever sentimentality one more time.

The Dark Night Rises. I tested The Dark Knight Rises at a  Cineplex for this review, and I actually fell asleep. I woke up mainly for Catwoman, played with classy verve by Anne Hathaway. Hathaway seems the best thing in the movie, aside from the elaborate machines. The opening set-up is clever, but it goes on too long, as does almost everything else–like Michel Caine’s sobbing admission  that he has failed the somber Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale). I say “Good” for Michael Caine, but shame from prostituting his talent in this drivel.

Ruby Sparks. I saw two other films that will keep me going back to movie houses  (and trying to avoid the ridiculously expensive popcorn there.) The first was Ruby Sparks, a romantic comedy, introducing Zoe Kazan as  the new America’s Sweetheart. She’s unpredictable but loveable, with a cute little nose that always looks vulnerable, on the verge of a cold. That vulnerability plays into this slight fantasy about how you can’t just create a perfect girlfriend on your own.

Beasts of the Southern Wild. Another film to keep us going out to the movies is Beasts of the Southern Wild. Its opening imagery is so rich and its people are so phantasmagoric, that you may feel  lost at first.  But there is the clear, hard voice of the heroine, Hushpuppy, to explain everything in her own way and by her own cosmology.  She makes life after a storm in the “bathtub,”  her marginal town that lies outside the Louisiana levee, seem almost normal.

I don’t enjoy confusion in a movie. But in Beasts of the Southern Wild, confusion is the very language of Hushpuppy’s experience of childhood and Nature and the love of a parent. Experience in Beasts of the Southern Wild can be poetic, savagely real about how we are all “meat,” comic, and refusing to  be sad. “No crying” is the demand of Hushpuppy’s father even in death.

So there are still good movies out there. I’ll continue to tell you about one or two of them every other week. Meanwhile you may decide to test your wakefulness by seeing The Dark Knight Rises. Some people thought it was a pretty good flick.

But don’t miss Ruby Sparks or Hushpuppy.

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From Mary Burgan. Email her at mary[AT]borderstan.com.

You can lose your hearing, not to mention your sanity, by just sitting through the previews in one of the big movie theaters in the District these days. The noise of trains, planes, and automobiles  crashing into each other is designed to cause you to shed those modest ear buds and get back to pure, spine-shattering SOUND.

And then there are the characters:  There may be a human or two among them, but most are inhuman monsters who have huge, gaping mouths with dripping, rotten teeth—the better to devour you with. And their skin is always some unflattering shade of green that identifies them as members of the lizard species — expanding their necks, eyes, tongues, etc., in terrifyingly ingenious ways. Don’t worry. You’re so used to them that you won’t have nightmares.

But in small theaters like the one at E Street or the one at the West End, you can still see some quiet movies–movies like The Kid with a Bike or Monsieur Lazhar. They don’t scare you silly. They leave you feeling glad that you are a human being in a world where imperfect people try to be kind to one another.

The Kid with a Bike, (a Belgian movie in French) is now in its second showing at the West End, and its quiet tonality matches the easy familiarity of the small screening rooms of that theater. Its sound is limited to the small puffings and clanks of Cyril’s bike or his quiet exchanges with Samantha, the woman who tries to help him. There is some conflict among members of a teen-age gang, but otherwise only the punctuation of small, tender scenes with Alfred Brendel playing the sublime adagio from Beethoven’s fifth piano concerto.

The story is a simple one about a boy determined to connect with a father who is equally determined to cut him off. (The mother is nowhere in sight). By chance the kid links up with a young woman, whom he has clung to when he is chased by the authorities into a doctor’s office waiting room. The woman, played without pretense by Cècile De France, takes him in without question, though not without testing.

And that’s it for plot. Nevertheless though the film’s simple story of a stranger taking care of a boy is deeply moving.

The same is true for Monsieur Lazhar (French Canadian, in French). In its simple narrative, a courtly immigrant from Tunisia takes over a class of students in a Montréal primary school after its teacher has committed suicide in their own classroom. Teaching them in traditional ways, he also works patiently with the students, and with the other teachers in the school.

They have buried the anxiety about the suicide so deep that its guilt threatens to overcome them and especially the one child who discovered the body. But finally Monsieur Lazhar’s own situation as a refugee in French Canada forces him to leave, though his students now seem able to struggle back to life.

That’s it. But once again the simple tale carries an emotional weight that might not survive the noise and frenetic action in any one of the current cinema blockbusters.

Give yourself permission to see one of these quiet movies this holiday weekend. Neither The Kid with a Bike  nor Monsieur Lazhar  will scare you, but each will make you feel both sad and hopeful. They assure you that it is good to be a human being, that others of your kind are not lying in wait to gobble you up. These are the right feelings to have now, at the end of the spring and the beginning of a long, hot summer.

But go!  The rest of this summer promises even more vampires and monsters from outer space and the sounds of ignorant armies, clashing by night.

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From Mary Burgan. Email her at mary[AT]borderstan.com.

You can get lists of movies about mothers on line, but that’s no fun. The fun comes from thinking back over all the films you’ve actually seen to consider the mothers in them. You’ll probably remember a character who embrace the role of mother eagerly.

Or reluctantly, as Shirley MacLaine observes in Terms of Endearment, “Why should I be happy about being a grandmother?” Of course, MacLaine is on my list as one of the unforgettable mothers and grandmothers in the movies I’ve seen.

So start your own list now. You might buy one of those films for your ma. Or you might look at one of the movies on your list once again,  then call to thank Mom for being the kind of mother, or not, that you’ve seen.

Almodovar sums it up at the end of his movie: “To all actresses who have played actresses. To all women who act. To men who act and become women. To all the people who want to be mothers. To my mother.”

Let me get you started with a good half dozen movies for Mother’s Day, and then you can add your own. Do that in the comments section, and give a sentence or two about your choice.

1. My all-time top movie for Mother’s Day is Two Women (1960), starring a Sofia Loren who bears no resemblance to the fashion plate associated with the European highlife of the 1970’s and 80’s. She is no fashion model in this classic Vittorio de Sica film, but a tough survivor intent on preserving her daughter in a brutal world at war. I have never forgotten the climactic scene in this film — one that brought Loren the first Academy Award for best acting of an actress in a foreign language (Italian) film.
2. Shirley MacLaine Is an equally fierce as the mother of Debra Winger (and the grandmother of her children) in David Brooks’ Terms of Endearment (1983). Otherwise, she is a flighty woman, bound by the rigid mores of her southern culture. And Debra Winger is terrific too as a mother who forces her oldest son to tell her he loves her to safeguard him from regrets when he gets older. Both women were nominated for Oscars for this movie. MacLaine won.
3.  Cicely Tyson is fierce but silent in Sounder (1972). She compensates for her husband’s absence,  though she never seeks to replace him within her share-cropping family. She merely dominates the film with the stillness of her resolve to keep the family together. I’ll never forget the look of dawning happiness on her suffering face when she hears that her husband has come home at last.
4.  Anywhere but Here (1999) is a Susan Sarandon movie that also introduces the teen-age Natalie Portman as a fine actress. Sarandon’s enactment of feckless but insistently caring motherhood lingers. And so does Portman’s rejection of her — a reaction against the mother that just barely, in the last moment, relents.
5.  All About My Mother (1999) is one of the great foreign films on my list. The somewhat confusing narration in Almodovar’s  kaleidoscopic Spanish film is  tragic, or is it comic?  It introduces Penelope Cruz as a pregnant nun after all and it follows a number of other characters from the stage and from the borderland between male and female. Finally, I realized that it was primarily a celebration of the many roles a truly mothering woman may take with children other than her own.
6.  I’ve just seen Mother (Madeo, 2009) a recent film from South Korea, because I wanted to observe motherhood from another culture, one far removed from my own. The film is about a poor mother in a provincial Korean town who turns to extremes in defending her mentally slow son from a murder charge. The plot of this film shows the influence of American CSI television, but the portrayal of the determined, though confused mother by Kim Hye-ja is unforgettable. By the end of this long and demanding film, I concluded that mamas are the same all over the world. And each one is unique.

Almodovar sums it up at the end of his movie: “To all actresses who have played actresses. To all women who act. To men who act and become women. To all the people who want to be mothers. To my mother.”

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From Mary Burgan. Email her at mary[AT]borderstan.com.

First there were the Harry Potter movies. Then the Twilight series. Now, The Hunger Games. And to my mind the greatest of these is The Hunger Games. I was instructed by my granddaughter to read the book and then see the movie. She thought the book was better, but I prefer the movie so far. There is more to come, for the film is based upon only the first volume of a trilogy.

A great strength of the movie is that it captures the intensity of its protagonist, Katniss Everdeen — a self-sufficient hunter and unerring archer who protects her widowed family by shooting game for them to eat and to barter for other necessities.

The family lives in a world that has grown hungry because of a government that keeps the populations of its 12 North American districts under control — by want, surveillance, and the demand for sacrifice of a young girl and a young boy in an annual contest of hunter and hunted, until the last one stands alone. The Hunger Games thus paints a resolutely dark image of a future in which the welfare of the State is kept in equilibrium through the sacrifice of  24 of its children in an annual televised contest among them.

The action of The Hunger Games is mainly quiet — silent runs through trees and underbrush, long periods of watching and waiting, hard breathing. The film may try too hard to enliven that action with camera movement, but the minimal hide-and-seek of the film is gripping enough on its own. It’s the outlandish action in the Capitol that may wear the viewer down. Everything there is loud and artificial. Its inhabitants are garishly made up, over-fed, and hypnotically involved in watching the bloodiest incidents of the Games.

The contrasts between the quiet desperation of the members of the districts and the hysteria of the privileged citizens of the Capitol (in the fictional nation of Panem) are rich. And that richness is another virtue of the film where the performances of several “adult” figures played by actors such as Woody Harrelson, Lenny Kravitz and Donald  Sutherland flesh out portraits of the state’s enablers.

But the film’s essential human drama comes from close-ups of Jennifer Lawrence, the young actress who plays the role of Everdeen to subdued perfection. Her unadorned face registers few emotions — resolve, determination, and an occasional smile. But her alertness suggests that she will be a sharp-witted survivor, saving as many of the combatants as she can along the way.

One of the subjects of Everdeen’s protection turns out to be Peeta Mellark, the boy contestant from her village. Mellark is never as aggressive as Everdeen, nor as resourceful. But, he harbors a long-hidden love for her and that joins the two together, despite the girl’s reluctance to join in a romance plot. Their salvation, however, turns on Katniss’s discovery that they can save each other by offering to die together. Their partnership grows from this act, and it will become more important and complicated as the series develops.

It is notable that of all the Young Adult block-busters, The Hunger Games is the only one to feature an active and self-reliant heroine, attractive to girls and boys alike. Unlike the swooning Bella Swan of the Twilight series, Everdeen is not motivated by love, and she has no suitor as fabulously handsome as Bella’s heroically restrained vampire lover. And although Hermione Granger shows some independence in the Potter series, Harry overshadows her.

The Hunger Games features a dark vision of the future, with release imagined only through the exercise of such human resources as wit, will and generosity. Those other young-adult stories with their magic wands, shape-changing villains, and fabulous settings can barely compete with the severe allegory of The Hunger Games. Young adults like the challenge of such a tale, it seems.

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From Mary Burgan. Email her at mary[AT]@borderstan.com.

Seeing the nominated films seems not to matter so much this year. A handful of films seem to have caught the eye, or fancy, or whatever, of the Academy members, and gotten the nominations and hype.

The Artist proves my point. It was a pleasant experiment in retro film-making. It plot was hackneyed, its actors attractive but hardly called upon to engage the audience in deep emotion, and its musical numbers brief and never breath-taking. Nevertheless, it has gained nominees for best picture, actor, supporting actress, director and screenplay.  It’s as if the Academy is trying to prove that it loves the French when they pretend to be American?

The Help—a weak rendition of a weak novel–will compete with The Artist. It did command extraordinary acting performances by its almost unknown black actresses, but it added one for a rising white actress as if to balance the racial mix. The film also got a nod for best picture, of course.

And then there are nominations for other films that I found deeply flawed last year:

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was so reserved that its plot was almost unintelligible, making the whole, long film boring.

Hugo was interesting but boring–a self-contradiction that often fits experimental films. This one is made by Martin Scorsese, and so pulls in nominations for best film and best director.

Rooney Mara (Rooney?) got a nomination for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which seems a nomination, really, to fill out the Best Actress category and to show that the Americans can do a better job on a Swedish thriller novel than the Swedish can. Take that,  Noomi Rapace.

Mary’s Choices

Well, enough kvetching. Here are my grudging choices in a year when I was never swept away by any movie.

Best Actor: George Clooney in The Descendants is the sentimental favorite, and my own as well. I think he acted even better in Syriana (2005), but his body of work (and very intelligent contributions in a number of spheres) make strong claims on an award this year. The same might be said of Brad Pitt. His work in Moneyball showed his capacity, though I would have nominated him for his acting in The Tree of Life. Actually, I really liked his work in Burn After Reading (2008).

Best Actress:  This is a tough one, even though Hollywood is reported as already giving the Oscar to Viola Davis for The Help. My choice is Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady, an astonishing feat of impersonation — though Margaret Thatcher was probably never as human as Streep’s performance makes her. It is a very strong category this year, and I wouldn’t be outraged if any of the other nominees got the award. Except Rooney Mara.

Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer will probably win for her fine work in The Help, though I would give the Oscar to Janet McTeer of Albert Nobbs. She made a remarkable contribution to the remarkable ensemble work of the whole cast, led by Glenn Close.

Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer’s turn in Beginners as the octogenarian father who finally comes out after his wife’s death, wins hands down. Plummer fully deserves a statuette, and I say this despite my prejudice against the man who rejected his own success portraying a repressed father in the beloved Sound of Music (1965). I haven’t seen Nolte in Warrior Or von Sydow in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Still, my second choice would be Jonah Hill of Moneyball.

Best Picture: I haven’t seen enough of the leading contenders to have an opinion. I liked the ambition of A Tree of Life. Midnight in Paris will perhaps win for Woody Allen’s life’s work. Other nominees belong to “we had tos, because we nominated one of its actors for a best.”  Or a sense that the category belongs to big, sweeping, weeping, films. That’s why I kept putting off War Horse and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

From Mary Burgan. Email her at mary@borderstan.com.

The over-determined deaths of troubled figures in the world of entertainment leave us with varying reactions.  Their talent may have awakened our sympathy at a critical age of stage in our lives. We may have been struck by their art as revealing new reaches of imagination. Or we may just be fascinated by the extremes of their lives. When they die, though, the details of those lives tend to flood the public consciousness,  demanding attention and interpretation.

The world of entertainment has just suffered the loss of one of its most sparkling stars, Whitney Houston, and already public efforts to interpret her life have started. Houston’s  entire career is now put up for display in never-ending tributes, or exposés.   She is seen as either a saint or a sinner:  “She had the voice of an angel”/”She should have sobered up and gotten off drugs for the sake of her daughter.”  I suspect that before long some screenwriter will attempt to sum up Houston’s life in a script, and some gifted actress will try to act out her triumphs and struggles before the camera. It will be good if that actress is as successful as Michelle Williams has been in portraying a public icon of the past in My Week with Marilyn.

Williams has been nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal of Marilyn Monroe on the screen. And rightly so. But  I think that there are limits to Williams’ achievement–mainly due to a film script that takes an extremely narrow view by treating only the limited time when Monroe was working on a film in England with Laurence Olivier.

Kenneth Branagh plays Olivier as a stick figure who is set up as a foil to Marilyn. But he cannot carry the film, and neither can the other actors who wander  in and out of the movie. Zoe Wanamaker’s turn as Paula Strasberg, Marilyn’s coach, wears thin with its insistence on the contrast between  Marilyn’s “Method” acting and Olivier’s down-to-earth approach. Judi Dench appears from time to time to comment on things as Dame Sybil Thorndike, and Derek Jacoby appears, momentarily, as the Queen’s librarian. There is even a small role for Emma Watson, suggesting that the movie is a minor jobs program for refugees from the Harry Potter series. Eddie Redmayne does enact a sympathetic version of Colin Clark, the rapt young Oxonian who gets the job of watching over Marilyn during the week when her husband had gone back to America. But the young man’s following the golden girl around does not make for much of a plot.

Nevertheless, Michelle Williams manages Marilyn’s walk, talk, and  gestures so well that her performance gives weight to a very slim movie. Her enactment of the movie star on the verge of a nervous breakdown is memorable. Williams uses the many close-ups given her in the film to convey a blend of innocence, unease, dependency, and sexiness. By the end of My Week with Marilyn the audience had some sense of the complex mix of neurosis and sweetness that made Marilyn Monroe a public icon.

Efforts to express such mixed impulses in the lives of public figures frequently fail. And there is something hokey about concocting a film version of a famous life when we have records of the stars themselves that do a better job. To really “get” Marilyn Monroe, the viewer needs to see Some Like It Hot and The Misfits. My Week with Marilyn  can’t substitute for the real thing.

Likewise, The Bodyguard “gets” Whitney Houston better than any memorial pastiche can. I saw that film several days ago, and its presentation of a star under threat explains Whitney’s lasting appeal. Of course, the film  has a contrived plot that the stolid Kevin Costner barely manages to make work. But Whitney steadies the show with a voice that soars, a physical image that radiates glamour, and a glint in the eye that beguiles. The star doesn’t die in The Bodyguard, but the film suggests a tragic curve in her life. She may kiss the hero in the end, but she cannot settle down.

Whitney Houston, like Marilyn Monroe, was inimitable. That’s why it’s best to let their images speak for themselves.

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From Mary Burgan. Email her at mary@borderstan.com.

Valentine’s Day is two days away. What to do? It’s never too late to plan a date to the movies, especially one with the right theme: romance and an incredible kiss.

The way to go on Valentine’s  Day is to the movies! You can take your poopsie to The AFI theater on Colesville Road in Silver Spring to see one of their “Screen Valentines,” great romance movies from the past.

I took a look at the list of titles we’ve already missed and The Awful Truth with Carey Grant and Irene Dunne played this last weekend (February 3-5). But you can still catch The African Queen, coming up (February 10-13). Tickets are a dollar or two cheaper than those at a Cineplex.

You can find some of the great movie great kisses of all time online. For example, check out the Los Angeles Times Magazines’s “50 Classic Movie Kisses” or see video clips on squidoo of “The Best Movie Kisses of All Time.”

I don’t see too many movies at the mall that seem like heart thrillers — they are mostly guns and no roses. So, how about a cozy dinner at home with a movie kiss, and then…

With so many choices now through on-demand options and Netflix movies you can download from home, you’ve still got time to plan for the right movie. For example, See Notorious to see how director Alfred for Hitchcock found a way to avoid the censors by staging a three-minute kiss between Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. There are also great kisses in Some Like It Hot, The Year of Living Dangerously and Dirty Dancing.

Or you could think of your own favorites. Then buy a bag of Hershey’s chocolate kisses and a bottle of Champagne, and settle in for some watching and smooching.

From Mary Burgan. Email her at mary@borderstan.com.

Take my advice and go over to Georgetown to see Pina as soon as you can. It is one of the most original films of this year — or any year, for that  matter!

Pina is a biographical study by Wim Wenders of the work of Pina Bausch, a German dancer and choreographer. I should note, though, that Pina’s art cannot be classified under one nationality. Hers is a world of many nationalities, and none is favored over another.

Don’t expect a straightforward story. Pina’s life and achievement — the two are one and the same–unfold almost wordlessly through motion, music, and abstract, stripped-down settings. As Wenders shows in his brilliant shots of the dancers in various of their collaborations,  the movements they call forth from their well-trained bodies are expressive of the deepest desires and fears in human experience.

I was eager to see Pina because I became enchanted with the bits of Bausch’s choreography that were integrated into Pedro Almodovar’s wonderful film, Talk to Her, several years ago (2002 from ). Pina has less story than Talk to Her, or, rather, its story is less a narrative than the enactment of a range of feelings.

The film is really indescribable, so I won’t try to describe it any more, except to say that it’s important to watch Pina with all the openness you can muster. Be patient. Don’t force interpretation. Let the passion, sorrow, grace, wit, beauty, and wisdom of Pina’s choreography enrich your own sense of being in the world.

Pina has been nominated for an Oscar as best documentary film of 2011. Because it’s in 3-D, the film is only being shown in theaters that have the appropriate screening sites. AMC Loews Georgetown, is the only 3-D site  in our area that has booked the film. Pina was sold out on its first weekend there, but it will only run at Georgetown for the next several weeks — until the audience runs out.

From Mary Burgan. Email her at mary@borderstan.com.

The Oscar nominations are out and the last-minute scramble to see nominated-movies is on. Today Mary reviews the performanes of Meryl Streep and Glenn Close, both nominated for Actress in a Leading Role.

Many reviewers of The Iron Lady have been too hard on a movie that should deal more seriously with politics, since it’s about a politician. Or so they complain, But the film is far less concerned with political rights and wrongs than with a particular human life, that of Margaret Thatcher, recalled in vivid fragments through a mind beginning to fail.

Given that focus, the film must portray a consciousness that has become unable to discriminate clearly between past and present. The movie as written and directed gives Meryl Streep the opportunity to project this extraordinary, fluctuating state of awareness. It is hard to see how it could have done so while dramatizing political issues and events in anything like their real-life complexity.

Of course, Streep looks so much like Thatcher that the two images simply merge in the film. As a result I felt much more genuine empathy with Thatcher in The Iron Lady than I had expected, and while primary credit for that surprise has to go to Streep, I think the others involved in making the movie deserve credit for making it possible.

The script takes advantage of Thatcher’s famous take-no-prisoners language in her rise to power. There is delight in her forcefulness, even when the film has her enunciate non-politically correct statements, such as the on her decision to defend the Falkland Islands in 1982: “With all due respect, sir, I have done battle every single day of my life and many men have underestimated me before. This lot seem bound to do the same, but they will rue the day.” In Streep’s portrayal, Thatcher never merely speaks; she enunciates.

Special notice should go to Jim Broadbent, the British actor who portrays Denis Thatcher both as an easy companion and a comic inhabitant of Margaret’s senescent daydreams. His appearances are not so much justifications of Thatcher’s political decisions as occasions for witty or sentimental relief. In all, then, The Iron Lady managed to win over this resolutely liberal — ”wet” in Thatcher language — viewer.

Glenn Close in Albert Nobbs

The interaction between inner and outer lives is a significant feature of Albert Nobbs, another film that gives a major American actress plenty of room to display her talent. In Albert Nobbs, the actress is Glenn Close. Like Streep, Close is nominated for an Oscar this year for a bravura performance that embodies the title character. But such a simplistic conception of Close’s role in Albert Nobbs, like Streep’s in The Iron Lady, neglects that fact that each film amounts to more than its title character.

Close does play the role of “Nobbs,” a diminutive, cross-dressed male waiter in late 19th Century Dublin, with an intensity that warrants her Oscar nomination. But that intensity is almost too much of a sad thing. The rest of the cast sustains the story’s interest, as Nobbs’ stunted life slowly modulates into something more than a mindless waste. It becomes tragic.

Albert Nobbs is less a self-indulgent star vehicle than a sensitive study of the ways in which servants in a marginal but pretentious Dublin hotel can finally pay homage to a life they barely knew. The film achieves this revelation through a number of fine performances — Mia Wasikowska as Helen, the flip chamber maid who eventually becomes the object of Nobbs’ affections; Pauline Collins as Mrs. Baker, the flirtatious but grasping hotel owner; Brendan Gleeson as an alcoholic resident doctor who has enough insight to summarize the import of the story, and Janet McTeer as a house painter employed for a day or so by Mrs. Baker

Nobbs has no idea who he/she is, but Hubert Page, another cross-dressing woman and self-acknowledged lover of women, is a fully aware and serves as a tough/tender liberator. It’s all very Irish and repressed, though there’s never a priest or nun in sight.

Albert Nobbs shares the brilliance of the story of The Iron Maiden, and not just because talented actresses spend themselves without stint in their roles. Each movie is more than a starring role.

It would be a shame to choose sides. Just go to see both.