The Oscar race entered a crucial stretch on Thanksgiving weekend, bringing some clarity to a strange and uncertain year.
"War Horse" screened, "The Artist" opened and "We Bought a Zoo" sneaked, and a flood of screeners landed in Academy and guild mailboxes in time for holiday viewing. In the past week alone, I caught up with Jason Reitman's "Young Adult," "The Iron Lady" with Meryl Streep, Cameron Crowe's "We Bought a Zoo" and "War Horse."
Many Oscar voters no doubt did some or all of the above as well.
Here are 10 burning questions -- and answers -- about this year's awards race, as seen from the aftermath of a key weekend.
Is Meryl Streep the slam dunk for "The Iron Lady" that she seemed to be on paper?
Yeah, she pretty much is. I didn't care for the movie (more on that in a minute), but Streep is undeniable as Margaret Thatcher – and if the first images of her in the role made her look like a nomination waiting to happen, the performance certainly delivers. Streep supplies not only the uncanny mimicry that was no doubt inevitable, but also the real sense of a woman for whom intransigence was both calling card and Achilles' Heel.
And it certainly helps that Streep's old-age makeup is brilliantly effective. In "J. Edgar," Leonardo DiCaprio and Armie Hammer never appear to be anything but themselves acting through layers of makeup; in "Iron Lady," Streep absolutely appears to be an 80-year-old woman, and the makeup is essentially in allowing her to disappear into the character.
Is there anything to the movie besides her performance?
For the most part, I don't think so. But I'm not an Academy voter.
I found the film simultaneously underdeveloped and overwrought -- it gives Streep's Thatcher her big triumphant moments and milks them for all they're worth, but without much sense of the political landscape other than the simplest broad strokes.
And the framing device – an aging Thatcher fighting dementia and remembering the past while seeing visions her late husband – quickly wears out its welcome as it revisits the same territory again and again.
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Still, I have to add that the AMPAS/guild audience at the screening I attended reacted enthusiastically to the film. Partly, that's because the first name to appear in the end credits belongs to Streep, which was guaranteed to start the applause on a high note. But co-star Olivia Colman and director Phyllida Lloyd received applause too, as did the makeup artists.
In fact, I'd say the applause was more robust (and the crowd bigger) than it was when "War Horse" screened two days later in the same room.
