Two biopics in one week – yummy. Yes, I know, sarcasm is the lowest form of humour.

“J. Edgar” – or Jedgar, as my friend Tom says, should be everything I want in a quirky film. My beloved Clint Eastwood directs and regular readers will know I am not sound on the wonderful and original Clint, who brings a dissenting voice to all that he does.

Except Hoover? The FBI? The people who make the current British phonetappers look like amateurs? Hoover’s FBI hounded lots of good people, with unproven allegations and innuedo.

But, unlike “The Iron Lady”, there has been plenty of time to look back and reflect on Hoover’s life. 

It seems that recent evidence shows that Jedgar didn’t dress in women’s clothing and wasn’t gay. Who cares? Not me. He could have been dancing in tutus around Washington and I would still think he was an evil man who saw communists he wished to destroy everywhere he looked.

Let me get through the assumptions of my ego and memory and look at this as a movie. Just a movie.

To start with, I found the prosthetics used by Leonardo DiCaprio and Armie Hammer beyond distracting and annoying. Different numbers of age spots freckle balding heads, within the same scene. Continuity? Hello?

As with Thatcher, the plot device hinges around Hoover looking back at his life. This is confusing and annoying. It only just works in “The Iron Lady” but it doesn’t work here. It makes it all feel episodic and bitty.

Young Edgar (or John) has dreams of making national security more streamlined and modern. He wants integrated systems and a database of fingerprints. He fights to take over key cases from local police.

As head of the FBI, he has longevity unimaginable to today’s security services, at almost 50 years in the job.

And he probably dies because Richard Nixon tells him he is about to lose his position.

At 134 minutes, it’s just too long. Judi Dench is very good as Jedgar’s mommy and Jessica Hecht is fabulous as Emma Goldman, although she has very little to do and looks unlike Emma.

I know the big case here  is the missing Lindbergh baby, but this plot went on WAY too long. Do people even know who Lindbergh is, nowadays?

So, I went back and watched “Hereafter” again last night. It was my best picture of 2011 and I feared I had been gulled. Nope, this fourth viewing brought me lots of new delights and it’s still an original movie about a difficult subject.

Pity I can’t say the same about “J. Edgar”. This will not be troubling my top 10 list of 2012.

Naomi Watts is okay as Helen Gandy, Hoover’s secretary.

Is it all true or not? I wish my emotions had been engaged enough to care. I checked the time at least 11 times and I was tempted to leave the Stratford Picturehouse, but I thought I might miss something special, if I did so.

There’s a good bomb explosion and some of the Kennedy and Martin Luther King scenes are a bit creepy, especially if you remember the events these recreations are based on.

Please, let Clint make another good movie soon. I would hate to remember this for very long.

Oh dear. It’s just too soon to make this movie. While it tries to be fair and balanced, many of the events shown are mired in controversy and fresh in too many living memories.

Love her or hate her, Margaret Thatcher is one of the key political figures of our time. For a woman to have been elected three times to be Prime Minister of Britain is an astonishing feat.

Feminists ought to be brimming with glee – and yet, those on the left and supporters of women’s rights tend to see Thatcher as a unique hate figure. How many living politicians have quite so many websites devoted to detesting them and, indeed, wishing them dead?

The film takes the interesting stance of Thatcher looking back over her life, from the perspective of a confused old age.

While it does not shy away from controversy around the Falklands, poll tax, the miners’ strike and other key events, those looking for apology or explanation will be disappointed.

The early life of the young Margaret Roberts is skipped over fairly quickly. Clever and stubborn, she is an ideologue with a vision, even before her marriage to Denis Thatcher.

Her rise to power, stay at the top and fall are catalogued. The portrayal of the marriage is the most engaging aspect of this tale.

Meryl Streep does a terrific job and is a certainty for an Oscar. Jim Broadbent is superb as Denis. Olivia Colman – so excellent in “Tyrannosaur” – is stunning as Carol Thatcher. 

It’s a good movie and it zaps along very quickly.

I met and interviewed Margaret Thatcher at the height of her power and was surprised by how charming and warm she was. My then editor teased me that I had been hoodwinked and taken in. Thatcher was softer than I expected. I did understand why so many in her party warmed to her.

I found the prosthetics in this film vaguely annoying. Abi Morgan’s script is better, crisper and more natural than her recent one for “Shame” and “Mamma Mia” director Phyllida Lloyd keeps the action moving forward.

The scene featuring the Brighton bombing is particularly affecting. And Nicholas Farrell’s brief scenes as Airey Neave are very good.

Older people watching it at the Stratford Picturehouse seemed to get a lot more from it than the younger people. For those under the age of 25, this is just another movie.

But, for me, it’s all just too soon. Boy, I wonder what that Oscar speech will be about?

George Clooney is a terrific actor.  He is just wonderful in this and has a star turn of considerable depth and flair in a very moving and lively drama.

Phew. After George’s last few movies, I was beginning to fear he was just a (very) pretty face. And (sort of) Canadian, so I had to love him, right?

Beautiful Hawaiian settings and an engaging story make this a deserving winner of the Golden Globes, both for best picture and for Clooney as best actor.

Matt King (Clooney) is forced to step up from being “backup parent” to two daughters when his wife is injured in a boating accident. A subplot hinge around development plans for King family land.

As the two daughters,  Shailene Woodley and Amara Rose are very real and funny, but many scenes are stolen by Sid, played by Nick Krause. He is somebody I will look out for in the future as he manages shifts from great pathos to humour, in an instant.

Of the other cast, Beau Bridges and Judy Greer both play key roles well.

“The Descendants” starts out by making the point that Hawaii isn’t just a tropical paradise, but that theme gets lost in the endless shots of envy-inducing  beaches and superb mountain settings.

Alexander Payne of “Sideways” and “About Schmidt” directs and shows again that he has a real flair for the inside workings of troubled souls. The King family’s trouble rarely strays into mawkish territory, but is moving. 

The very full Stratford Picturehouse audience enjoyed it, although I wish latecomers weren’t quite so comfortable moving across rows and disturbing sight lines of many others. The movie was engaging enough that the usual mobile phones stayed silent.

The author of the book this movie is based on, Kaui Hart Hemmings, plays a too-short cameo role as Matt’s secretary.

Music underscores the scenes very nicely. After seeing a run of rather heavy movies with deep meanings, “The Descendants” is that rarity, a gentle family story that lifts you up, while still having a great deal to it.

Every summer, I dutifully drag myself to the beautiful Globe Theatre in London, England to take North American visitors to see a live Shakespeare play. Shakespeare is a terrific writer, but I am not his biggest fan. Great plots and characters, but the language – lovely as it is – just fails to engage me.

“King Lear” and “Coriolanus” are the only two Shakespeare plays I love. Every time I see a production of one of these, I get something wonderful from it.

This new “Coriolanus” is Shakespeare for those who don’t really like the Bard of Avon. It’s a fantastically engaging war movie, set in modern times and the script combines the best of Shakespeare’s words with John Logan’s excellent changes to the key places where Mr S’s words are difficult, for a modern viewer.

Ralph Fiennes directs and stars in the title role. Gerard Butler is fantastic as Aufidius, his military foe. And Vanessa Redgrave packs a powerful punch as Coriolanus’ mother.

From the beginning, you are plunged into war, with real effects that had the squeamish at the Notting Hill Gate Picturehouse squirming and looking away.

You need a strong stomach for violence to get the best from this.

It’s an in incredibly powerful film. The Serbian (and Montenegrin) settings substitute for Rome and the whole thing just fizzes with action and modern themes. Coriolanus’ big problem is he won’t play to the crowd and court celebrity. If the themes interest you, there are hundreds of great books about this play.

But you really don’t need to know anything about the play to thoroughly enjoy and love the movie.

The music enhances the plot, rather than intruding.

It’s Ralph Fiennes first work as a director and it feels like a labour of love. There are times when the whooshing around of the camera, in the crowd and war scenes, gets a bit dizzying, but that adds to the total experience.

Do see it. The packed Gate Cinema all buzzed with excitement afterwards and agreed it is an excellent movie. The two hours rush by and it will stay in your mind in a very good way.

Boy meets horse. Boy loves horse. Boy loses horse. War is hell. Will boy get horse back?

Boy, is it easy to be cynical about this piece of sentimental soppiness. And yet, there is a real allure here for anyone who ever loved a horse – and ascribed thoughts and feelings to it, in the Disney style.

For those who have grown up with Uncle Walt’s speaking creatures and Steven Spielberg’s blockbusters, this will be the perfect match. Caring about horses will make you give this a big thumbs up, too.

It’s an engaging story, from the novel by Michael Morpurgo and then adapted from a grand and inventive play.

You start out in Devon which looks absolutely gorgeous and sun-kissed, here. Even rain is beautiful and glows, with that special Spielberg fairy dust.

Yes, you might notice that the accents are a little all over the place, but you put this churlish thought right out of your mind.

Then, you are off to World War I and you rush headlong, from idyll into nightmare. Hardly anyone does enormous set piece war scenes on the scale of Spielberg’s war sets and this really is “Saving Private Ryan” on steroids with more horses, people, guns and – well, just MORE of everything.

Real war isn’t nearly as airbrushed and manicured as this, but I hope that the noise and hugeness of this is the closest I ever get to the real thing. 

It’s too long. At nearly two and a half hours, I was enthralled, but snuck in a couple of looks at my watch.

The friend I saw this with likes the whole “War Horse” story way more than I do, but that worked well to get me feeling a bit more enthusiastic about it than I would have been, otherwise.

I can see why it’s topping the box office as it’s the ideal remedy for recession-hit times in that it has many feel good moments.

For all the schmaltz, there are great things to see here. It’s all driven by super visuals which will suck even cynics in.

Jeremy Irvine, Neils Arestrup and Celine Buckens give the best performances, although Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hiddleston are also quite affecting.

The real star is the gorgeous stallion, who leads a cast in which the people are outnumbered by fabulous horses.

Do see it, because it’s a great movie. Leave your doubts at the door.

The sparse but enthusiastic Stratford Picturehouse audience loved it, to the extent that they did not seem to be playing on their phones, at all, through the whole thing. Sniff, snuffle. It’s really very beautiful.

Funny old concept, shame. Psychotherapists base successful businesses on helping people overcome it.

Judged as a piece of art, “Shame” has quite a lot that is beautiful, original and thought-provoking. The way the sheets on the bed get changed from blue to white, the delicacy in the mundane and the scenes of the lone  jogger in the middle of the night stay with you, like a fantastic picture on a canvas.

As a movie, I have some issues with it. I care about continuity and one of Carey Mulligan’s big scenes as Sissy is undermined, for me, by three changes in her hair colour in what is supposed to be one scene with some urgency. I accept that actors need to change clothes and have several sets of different costumes.  But somebody should make sure that one of these “identical costumes” isn’t slightly faded, in a scene the depends on observing agony.

These are minor quibbles – but I have so many more of them!

In case you know nothing about ”Shame”, here’s the plot. Brandon is a successful New York City professional who manages his sex addiction but is gradually being subsumed by it. His computer at work is taken away, because there is so much pornography on it.

The delicate balance of his career and addiction becomes unhinged when his needy sister comes to stay with him, in a small apartment. New York’s Standard Hotel, with its compelling Hudson River views, is the main indoor set.

If you are going for the graphic sex and nudity scenes, you may be disappointed rather than aroused. This is rather a nasty vision of sex as a fuel for an addict.

Michael Fassbender is wonderful in the lead. he just glows with energy and gets you to feel truly sympathetic to him. As in “Hunger”, be brings a new depth to each character he plays for director Steve McQueen.

I have spent a lot of my life in Canada and the USA and a great deal of time in New York City. I love the city. Abi Morgan – such a brilliant TV and movie writer – gets the dialogue wrong, too often. It feels like she wrote scenes for people from London, England and then had some Americans listen to them and correct, piecemeal. The adjustments feel disjointed and I am constantly changing dialogue in my head, as I am watching.

Carey Mulligan shines as Sissy, because she is a wonderful actress. But her accent drifts uncomfortably and this bothered me. Still, she manages the big emotional scenes well. Her singing may be electronically adjusted – I am sure it is – but it’s still very special and affecting.

I like very much that the damage to both brother and sister – causing different types of shame – was hinted at in an artsy way rather than stated. And I adored the look and feel of this.

I saw it at Stratford Picturehouse in a disappointingly small audience. There was a question and answer session via satellite from the Curzon Mayfair afterwards. This was monopolised by the presenter, who seemed very uncomfortable and managed to speak in double entendres that kept the audience at Stratford giggling.

As an example, he asked “Did you use your instinct to enquire into sex addiction?” – oh, how we giggled like schoolkids.

The Curzon live audience just nudged each other. Such well brought up people.

Steve McQueen (yes, I know who he is but I always see the car chase in “Bullitt”) and Abi Morgan discussed the process of making the movie and that was fascinating. They wanted to set it in London, but couldn’t find sufficient sex addicts who were willing to tell all. Even after Princess Diana’s death, Brits don’t like to share everything in public. Who knew?

Even with my misgivings, it’s an engaging and different movie and you have to see it. Just get swept away by the story and ignore my concerns. I am such a picky pedant. I am almost ashamed of it.

The happiest people in the audience were the ones who never heard of Stieg Larsson, Michael Nykvist or Noomie Rapace.  They were spared comparisons and thinking about this movie as a remake of the first of a perfectly fine Swedish trilogy of movies based on a TV series based on a book.

Hearing them chatting happily, I decided ignorance may be a great blessing. I have clear memories of three original movies that were released in 2010 and 2011. Those films are just too recent to be remade. Good memory is a great curse, in this case.

The big problem I had with the original movie is the same problem I have here. The rape scenes are awful to watch. I am a feminist and there are no circumstances in which I can watch rape and be okay.

Seeing Daniel Craig in a role Michael Nykvist owns is very difficult. Craig is James Bond, for crying out loud and every time he refers to himself as a “58-year-old journalist”, I have to suppress laughter.

Rooney Mara as Lisbeth is airbrushed and glows. This is punk gone Vogue with beautiful lines and shimmery lights. Mara played the girl who rejected Mark Zuckerberg in the first scene of David Fincher’s “The Social Network”. That role is fiction as Zuckerberg has been in a relationship with the same woman since before Facebook existed.

Having said all that, there are great strengths here. Sweden looks terrific. David Fincher is really good at drawing you in and some of the complexities of the original Swedish film are simplified and easier to follow.

Our hero journalist has been found guilty of libel and virtually bankrupted. A rich Swedish industrialist, played by the wonderful Christopher Plummer, hires him to figure out why an adored young relative disappeared, 40 years earlier. Crack computer hacker Lisbeth (Mara, the Girl of the title) comes along to help.

At worst, this movie feels like an extended advertisement for Apple Computers. At best – any scene Robin Wright or Joely Richardson is in – the film feels less fractured than the original and easier to understand.

But people pretending to be Swedish becomes very Muppets’ Swedish chefs and you may start remembering their little songs.

Too many movies from other countries are being remade too quickly. Is Hollywood out of plots? No, but recession-hit times mean you need sure-fire and proven stories.

There are loads of original stories out there, but Hollywood is not about taking risks, right now.

I liked the sense of real research in archives being completed, in a painstaking way. I also liked the genuine sense of a cold isolated island and a an underheated house. The island houses most of the industrialist’s extended family.

The sense of understatement and tortured lives was also handled quite well.

The soundtrack, by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is terrific. I was going to complain that “The Immigrant Song” is ripped off, but it’s given credit.

I miss Tehilla Blad, who was so moving in giving the back story of the young Lisbeth in the original. I also miss Noomie and Michael, who languish in the new Sherlock Holmes and Mission Impossible movies, when they should be starring in this.

This film will bring the story to a whole new generation. About a third of my blog subscribers are under 18 and won’t be able to see it, legally, but they are resourceful young people and some of them have already blogged on it. I think they will love it a lot more than I do.

My biggest issue is that the leads are just too glossy and beautiful, in a tale of the socially excluded and marginalised.

The Notting Hill Gate Picturehouse is a beautful and comfortable place to see a movie. I had to move forward as I had a hair tosser in front of me who chatted through the whole thing while playing with her hair, which was enormous.  Fortunately, there were a few spare seats at the front. This venue does terrific coffee. Just terrific.

Should you see it? Yes, you should. You will rarely see such gorgeous people in such beautiful places.  David Fincher loves this story and that love shines through. Mara and Craig have real chemistry and the whole ensemble of the cast have wonderful moments of brilliance.

I still long to see Rapace and Nyqvist together again, with Tehilla Blad in the story somewhere.

Hark! Is that an angel or just the sound of a franchise creaking? That noise is definitely not Tom Cruise’s knees. At nearly 50, he looks great, apart from a few cruel camera close-ups on his face.

“MI4″ is entertaining, but lacks the oomph of the first two films. Although much better than “MI3″, it all feels like a cartoon, which is where director Brad Bird has done most of his best work including “Up” and “Ratatouille”.

There are various rules directors have to follow in making action movies these days:
1) There will be terrifying aerial shots that are not for those who are scared of heights.
2) There is no maximum number of guns allowed. More is better. Even more is much, much better.
3) Fights will be frequent and will include women. Their clothing will wiggle around, to reveal bits of their anatomy.
4) The bad guy always loses.
5) One of the bad guys is a girl. She is criminally pretty.
6) Explosions, running a great deal and phone and high-tech trickery must be frequent and loud.

All these rules are followed very strictly in “MI4″. Bird’s animation expertise brings new life to the franchise, but it would have been better if the script, which is credited to three writers, had been a little less cartoonish.

You can see the bad guys coming as they almost have sneers and bad facial hair, although those actual features are not here.

Instead, we have the marvellous Michaael Nykvist of Sweden’s TV and movie “Girl” as  the bad guy, ably helped along by Lea Seydoux. Both look wonderful and are super baddies.

The plot – don’t you fret about that little thing – is about the MI team being disavowed (yet again) and having to figure out who bombed the Kremlin and may have B-I-G weapons which could start a world war.

The sidekicks are special. Simon Pegg is very funny as a computer geek and Paula Patton – who was very affecting as the teacher in “Precious” and as Claire in “Deja Vu” – adds sparkle and wit as well as glamour.

Jeremy Renner from “Hurt Locker” is all action man, yet subtly brooding over past pain.

There are slow bits, which no action movie can afford. Brad Bird has a lyrical sense and it just does not fit in here. You could tell when the movie had lingered and tried to say and mean something, because all the phones in Stratford Picturehouse went on and the little lights showed apps being switched on and played with.

Only another explosion would stop them. Fortunately, there are lots of explosions here. Your attention doesn’t wander for long.

Dubai, India and Canada substituting for Seattle all make for lovely locations.

As a great fan of the original TV series, I am glad they have kept Lalo Schifrin’s iconic theme tune and so much of the spirit of the preposterous plots, lavished with gimmickry, that featured on TV.

This will look very good on a small screen and will be snapped up by millions on DVD. 

I enjoyed it and it wasn’t a bad way to end my movie-viewing year. If you like Tom Cruise, you’ll  adore it. For me, it passed the time well, but I don’t need to change my list of top 10 films of the year. Indeed, it won’t make my top 25 of 2011.

If you want to see a Christmas-free movie, with fantastic stunts and fights, this is for you. Most of the audience was male and between 17 and 30-years-old.

Happy New Year to you all! Thank you for following me and a very big thank you to Stratford Picturehouse, Notting Hill Gate Picturehouse, the British Film Institute and ShowFilmFirst for all the great films I saw. A special thank you to everyone who made the movies I saw as without you, life would be much less fun.

This is one of the best movies I have ever seen. My mother told me so and she was right. I think I was foolishly swayed against it by the grainy quality of the original film. Being very visual, the wobbly and out of focus images made me miss the strength of this  film’s outstanding acting and direction and storytelling.

The remastered and newly-released version of this is delightful, from start to finish after 180 minutes that seem to zip right by.

Also, it’s not really a film with a massive appeal for the very young. You need to be older to get the meaning of the regrets and missed chances shown here. Having said that, the youngsters in the audience seemed to adore it and the very young man sitting next to me had read the script. 

“Les Enfants du Paradis” was quite an old movie when I first saw it. Film critics swooned about it and it is regularly selected as the best French movie ever by experts, even now.

Time worked against it. It was filmed in Paris in 1945 in the last days of Nazi occupation and under extreme conditions of censorship.

Those who made it filmed in the hope that the end of World War 2 would permit added dialogue. That happened.

The film recreates the lives of those working in an 1820s theatre in Paris. Many of the characters are based on real historical figures from those turbulent times and you can read all about that on Wikipedia, if you wish to.

Marcel Carne has made an absolute masterpiece and Jacques Prevert’s dialogue is brilliant and poetic, as you might expect from this extraordinary French writer.

Even the music and the subtitles in English glow with innovation. Great English words and they are hardly ever inaccurate, although not a patch on Prevert’s magic.

Arletty, who plays Garance, was painted by some of the greats in her youth and she is at the height of her powers here.

Jean-Louis Barrault and Pierre Brasseur play the two male leads, but there isn’t a bad performance from this stunning ensemble. I wish it were in colour rather than black and white, but it’s vivid enough to engage all your senses.

Maria Casares and Marcel Herrand both are profoundly affecting in their smaller roles.

“Paradis” in this context means the cheaper seats that are further back at the theatre, or the “gods” in Britain. There are some images here that make me think parts of “The Artist” are a homage to this, in that the involvement of the audience in the mimed and spoken performances is key to how you see all the different points of view.

It’s just terrific. There are screenings at the BFI, Stratford and Notting Hill Gate Picturehouse and loads of other places. See it while you can as it is a masterclass in how to make a love story while having a very rich and deep sense of time and place.

As sequels go, this is well above the usual standard and true to many of the Sherlock Holmes stories. The stunts, chases and period flavour of the 1890s are all good.

However, the audience got restless about 45 minutes in. It’s easy to see this at Stratford Picturehouse because all the phones start glowing in the dark. People are doing apps and texting like their lives depend on it.

The problem with this is it lacks the heart and mind of the Sherlock Holmes movie of 2009. That fizzed with innovation and was just lovely. This has some great moments,  but these are only moments.

While Robert Downey, Junior and Jude Law are present and correct, the absence of much screen time of Rachel McAdams is keenly felt. Yes, I know Iwas critical of her in the original,  but I was wrong.

Noomi Rapace is one of my favourite actresses. She is excellent in this, but, oddly, she and Downey have no chemistry at all. Boy, does that absence undercut everything that happens here.

Jared Harris is wonderful as Moriarty and yet he lacks any real  sense of evil. He is cuddly when Moriarty should be threatening.

Stephen Fry plays Mycroft Holmes and Kelly Reilly is Mary Watson yet, unless you are a diehard fan of either of them, you just don’t care much.

The Stratford Picturehouse screen was less than a third full, which is never  good sign on the second day of a film showing there.

The train, shoooting and Reichenbach Falls scenes are when this film is at its best. It channels the essence of the Holmes story and mythology at these times.

But cars in  1891? In London? Let’s not be silly. Even if you dive in through the anachronisms, you will be a little annoyed.

Guy Ritchie directs again and, while he has the breakneck pace correct – he is good on guns and the manufacture of weapons – you just don’t get very involved.

The gypsy scenes are very cool, if a tad contrived through modern lenses. 

Oh, I wanted to love this. I hoped it would trouble and revise my top 10 of 2011.

It doesn’t. Shame. See it and argue with me. I long to see some worth in this.