Actual interior monologue of the admittedly somewhat resistant critic while watching Iron Lady: “Oh, God, another damn impersonation … Streep and her accents … Might as well give her the Oscar nomination now … the Great Lady of Cinema … We’ll see the acting, that’s for sure. Can’t she ever just be real? I’m not falling for her pyrotechnics again, I’m hardened to her virtuosity … Here we go. Looks like they start when Thatcher is old and losing it. Gee, Meryl, what big English teeth you have. Holy shit, that’s good makeup, and they know how to light her like they didn’t poor Leo in J. Edgar. Well, to be fair, she makes the makeup work because she moves her facial muscles like an old lady would … Now she’s talking to Jim Broadbent as her dead husband, Denis … It’s so private the way she teases him I’m almost embarrassed. Okay, she does the old lady well, but what about the flashbacks to when she’s middle-aged? Hunh. She sounds like Thatcher. She has a great ear. She gets the music in the voice and through the music the mind and through the mind the emotions and through the emotions the way the body takes the space. Yes, that’s how Thatcher took the space. She had to, as a woman. I feel I understand Palin better and Bachmann and even that chucklehead Christine O’Donnell … I don’t think Thatcher’s intellect was flexible, but I now see where it’s coming from. This is … uncanny. This is … one of the greatest impersonations I’ve ever seen. It’s so distilled but so in the moment, so real. Curse you, Meryl Streep! You’ve won again. You’re too frigging marvelous to resist.”