I think it’s interesting that the two most influential conservatives of the late 20th century (Ronald Reagan & Margaret Thatcher) both sadly suffered from dementia in later life.  Is this just a coincidence?  There’s been some research linking conservatism to somewhat lower IQ, so perhaps conservatism is a sign that the brain is compromised in some way which may make one more vulnerable to dementia in later life.

On the other hand Margaret Thatcher was obviously extremely bright to have come from nothing to be the most powerful woman in the World in a male dominated field during a time of great sexism; and unlike Hillary and so many other women who rise to power, she was a self-made woman who didn’t have a powerful husband or father to pave the way.  However even extremely high IQ people can have subtle cognitive problems that turn into dementia in old age.

This scene from the movie The Iron Lady implies Thatcher was becoming demented while still in office:

What’s fascinating about the scene is it implies her social IQ was the first to decline.  Had she taken an IQ test at that time she would have likely done very well because she could still recall facts (only one t in the word “poverty”) and unleash a very coherent and articulate tirade, but subtle cognitive problems made her oblivious to how abusive and hysterical she seemed to others and the political harm this would cause her.  These cognitive functions are not well sampled by IQ tests.

Although I thought this was an extremely well acted, well written movie, shame on actress Meryl Streep and writer Abi Morgan for making a movie that focused on Thatcher’s dementia, and one that was released while Thatcher was still alive and suffering.  I suspect both Streep and Morgan are liberals and I fear this was an attempt to diminish one of the most extraordinary women of all time…a way of punishing her for being conservative.  On the other hand the movie was tastefully done and in some ways a sympathetic portrayal.

The person Meryl Streep was born to play is Hillary, but she wont because as a liberal, she wouldn’t want to undermine Hillary with a realistic portrayal.

I was trying to coax my fiancée into a cozy weekend at home watching horror movies when a bunch of my coworkers skated over.  Since it would look very unprofessional to put on a slasher film, but I still wanted something dark and haunting that would go with the weather outside, I decided to order some Atom Egoyan movies, since not only are they generally very good and distinctly Canadian in their atmosphere, but they signal extreme sophistication.

I asked one of my coworkers to skate to the store to buy chocolate bars so I could make my signature hot chocolate for the group.

We watched three Atom Egoyan movies (commenter Rockall suggested I rate the movies I write about, so I will do so):

Chloe (2009) 7/10:  In this movie, a gynecologist played by Julianne Moore hires a beautiful and classy hooker played by Amanda Seyfried to seduce her professor husband played by Liam Neeson, as a test to see if he’ll remain faithful.

One thing I enjoyed about this movie was just the house where the gynecologist and the professor lived.  The walls of the upstairs level were all made of glass.  I see this a lot when I visit clients who live deep in the woods.  They are too secluded to worry about strangers peaking into their window, but they want to peak out from every angle to enjoy the beauty of the surrounding wilderness.

Calendar (1993) 8/10:  The movie is about a Canadian photographer of Armenian ancestry (played by Atom Egoyan himself) filming and photographing churches in Armenia to make a calendar, as a local driver tells him about the history, and the photographer’s wife (played by Egoyan’s real wife) translates what he’s saying into English so that the photographer can understand.

I think you generally need an IQ of at least 115 to enjoy this movie, otherwise you’ll be bored out of your mind and the whole thing will seem tedious and pointless.  First you need to be smart enough to understand the nonlinear narrative structure, because the movie keeps flashing from the present to the past.

You also need to understand the tension slowly building between the photographer and his wife, who in very subtle ways, makes him feel like he’s not Armenian enough since he doesn’t know the language and doesn’t even seem to care about the history, but is only there to create a calendar he’s been hired to make.

The film is ultimately about being disconnected from your past and that sense of not belonging anywhere, that so many children of immigrants feel.

The Sweet Hereafter (1997) 10/10:  This one of the best movies I have ever seen in my entire life.  It’s about a lawyer who comes to a small snowy town to get the parents of children who were killed or paralyzed by a school bus accident to join a class action law suit.  Meanwhile his drug addict daughter is constantly phoning him asking for money.

Like Calander, the film is hauntingly beautiful and constantly flashing between past and present.  The film is about how part of being a parent is accepting the death of your kids.  As the lawyer explains, “all our kids are dead to us”.  For his drug addict daughter is dead metaphorically, his client’s kids are dead literally from the accident,  and a surviving child is dead in ways we don’t fully understand until late in the film.  Meanwhile the nation’s teenagers wander through shopping malls like zombies.  The entire film is set against the backdrop of the winter landscape; the season where we’re surrounded by the death of nature.

Before I was famous it was a lot easier to review movies because I didn’t have to worry about the people who actually made them googling my reviews, but these days I have to be a lot more guarded in what I write. Fortunately, I have only good things to say about Breathe In (2014) starring Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones.

So the other day I’m visiting my parents in the suburbs and the snow starts pouring down. I knew it was going to snow that evening but I had no idea it would do so with such speed and intensity. I was scheduled to meet some clients way out in the country but the driving conditions were hazardous, so I rescheduled the appointments. Finally a night off and on a cold cozy night to boot, I thought; this calls for a movie!

Impressed with how hard I’ve been working at my job, my father offered to cook me some French Toast made of English muffins (my favorite!) which would go perfectly with my movie. Unfortunately, my mother was dominating the huge screen TV watching comedies (yawn), so I took my plate of French Toast and headed to the basement which also has a big screen TV (but not nearly as big).

I went to movies on demand, and started scrolling through the newest releases for something dark and haunting and stumbled on Breathe In. Here’s the trailer:

The movie stars Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones but to me, the real star was Mackenzie Davis, who I just found out it is Canadian (attended McGill University). I’m not praising her because she’s Canadian or because I know her…everyone thinks all Canadians celebrities know each other, nothing could be further from the truth…but because her performance was interesting and original.

Davis plays Lauren, a high school girl who must share her bedroom with a foreign exchange student (spoiler alert) named Sophie (played by Felicity Jones). At first they get along great and Lauren introduces Sophie to all her friends, but tension builds as Lauren’s friends seem to like Sophie better than they like her, and Lauren’s father is more impressed by Sophie’s piano skills than he is with Lauren’s swimming talent. But when Lauren discovers that not only is Sophie getting intimate with a boy Lauren likes, but also with Lauren’s own father (played by Guy Pearce), she goes ballistic.

Lauren’s father works as a music teacher at the school Lauren and Sophie attend and when he runs into his daughter in the hall, he doesn’t know that she saw him on a blanket in the woods with Sophie. He tries to say hello but she says nothing. She just looks at him with eyes full of tears and face that contorts, before regaining its composure and then contorting again. She storms off, much to the confusion of her perverted clueless father.

That night she doesn’t come home for dinner.

Nor does she come home for bed time.

But deep into the night, when everyone is sleeping, she comes home.

She slowly makes her way to her bedroom that she is sharing with Sophie, and approaches the bed where Sophie is sleeping and starts touching Sophie’s face with her fingers. Startled and confused, Sophie wakes up and greets her. And in one of the creepiest scenes in a recent movie, Lauren quietly orders Sophie to sit up, and to stop breathing so loudly. But as soon as Sophie sits up, Lauren wrestles her back down, pinning her to the bed.

“This is my house,” Lauren keeps saying, over and over.

Sophie realizes she has no choice but to find somewhere else to live.

I watch a lot of horror films, but they don’t disturb me as much as haunting dramas about the dark side of suburbia do. This movie hit just right the tone, and much like American Beauty (an even better film) exposed the fact that behind the perfect facade of your all American suburban dad may lurk an evil pervert, secretly lusting after young girls. No matter how well you think you know someone, you can never know what goes on in their private mental world. That’s a lot more terrifying that any horror film.

At least the “young” girl he was lusting after was played by a woman in her thirties, which not only made me feel young again, but also made me much less creeped out by the movie. I think film makers deliberately hire old actors to play teenagers to comfort the audience with delusions of youth. Or maybe the flim makers are just comforting themselves.