The Iron Lady is a better performance than it is film, although I suspect the performance will carry the day.

Full Review | Aug 31, 2018

While the movie tries to cultivate Thatcher's life, it's not perfect. But the chemistry between Broadbent and Streep to elevate an untold romance beautifully elevates the flawed movie.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Sep 8, 2017

So, as thrilling as it is to watch Streep imitate Thatcher, The Iron Lady feels like a missed opportunity, not to blame and cast aspersions, but to weigh and assess.

Full Review | Nov 5, 2013

Can a mediocre movie be made worthwhile by a single performance?

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 27, 2012

If the idea is to humanise the woman, it's rather wasted. If there's one thing Margaret Thatcher won't be remembered for, it's her humanity.

Full Review | Jan 18, 2012

Yes, Streep is wondrous as usual, but her superpowers have been squandered here.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Jan 13, 2012

The Iron Lady is a performance in search of a film.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 13, 2012

Often "The Iron Lady" relies on montages to get to - and plow through - historic high points.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 13, 2012

[Streep's] performance overpowers the movie it's in - a perfectly executed triple axel that renders everything else just featureless ice.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 13, 2012

Streep's performance is so true and so uncannily accurate, so full and so complete in its understanding, that she is fascinating every second she is onscreen.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 12, 2012

Streep, no fan of Thatcher, nicely undercuts the poignancy of her current condition with flashbacks that reveal her brittle arrogance in office.

Full Review | Jan 12, 2012

A performance by Meryl Streep of endless intelligence cannot keep this portrait of Thatcher from being the sentimental nonsense she spent her career trying to avoid.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jan 12, 2012

While the rest of "The Iron Lady" fades quickly in memory, Meryl Streep's performance in the title role remains startlingly present.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 12, 2012

Everything Streep does here is a seismic act of theater. If she so much as tilts her head, the earth tilts with it. She doesn't simply overwhelm this thin historic biography - and the other actors around her - she detonates it.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 12, 2012

The portrait that Streep delivers in Phyllida Lloyd's impressionistic biopic is astonishing.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 12, 2012

A stylized biography of one of the most powerful women in politics, portrayed by the greatest actress of our time, that asks more questions than it answers.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 12, 2012

Even if you have little interest in Thatcher or why she mattered, you'll likely respond to the contradictory yet charismatic character that Streep has conjured from truth and myth.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 12, 2012

Yes, it's a strangely de-politicized portrait of Britain's first female prime minister. But what's there is actually enough.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 12, 2012

You have to be very talented to work with Meryl Streep. It also helps to know how to use her. "The Iron Lady" fails in both of these categories.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 12, 2012

Streep gets under the skin of one of the 20th century's most dynamic and also most contained personalities.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 12, 2012