The Iron Lady (2011)

Not just a biopic of the British Prime Minister. It’s also a portrait of Alzheimer’s and mental decline, a history of late-20th-century Britain and a love story. 

Mark Thatcher comes out of it badly (as he did in real life), but Carol (Olivia Colman) and Dennis (Jim Broadbent) come across very well. Meryl Streep is highly convincing as Margaret Thatcher. It can’t have been an easy role to play. The film focuses on telling her story rather than passing judgement and as such seems very forgiving of her, despite offering plenty of evidence of the terrible damage she did.

Water (1985)

Michael Caine plays the Governor of the (fictional) Caribbean island of Cascara. The generally quiet, happy life on this remote British colony is interrupted when it’s discovered that there’s a potentially lucrative natural supply of mineral water beneath the ground. Suddenly, everyone from US oil magnates and the British Prime Minister (Maureen Lipman as Margaret Thatcher) to Cuban guerrillas and a French water business want a stake in Cascara’s future. 

The cast features many actors known from TV roles, including Billy Connolly, Leonard Rossiter (in his final performance), Fulton Mackay, Ruby Wax and Fred “Herman Munster” Gwynne. 

I’m not a fan of Connolly, but thankfully he’s fairly restrained in this part – partly because his character has vowed to communicate only via song. On the down side, there’s a long, cringeworthy scene in which he plays on stage with a band including George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Eric Clapton. Half of the Beatles and the world’s most famous living guitarist, and all they could come up with was a snug, dreary, tepid mess. 

That aside, it’s a playful, good-natured comedy that’s both intelligent and very silly. I like the way the various plot threads come together. At its best it recalls a less subtle and sophisticated version of Local Hero, particularly for the strong sense of community it develops.

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

There are a few unusual things about this James Bond film. For a start you see the performer of the song in the title sequence – in this case Sheena Easton. Secondly, the film ends with Margaret and Dennis Thatcher taking a phone call from a parrot they believe to be James Bond. Impersonators Janet Brown and John Wells play the pair, and it’s a genuinely funny scene, but it’s certainly not what you expect from a film in this series.

For Your Eyes Only is slightly grittier than the daft Moonraker, and it’s one of the more watchable Roger Moore films.

Topol is easy to like as the nut-guzzling Milos Columbo, while Carole Bouquet is fairly good as Melina Havelock. Julian Glover is the unspectacular villain Aristotle Kristatos. The subplot about Bibi Dahl (Lynn-Holly Johnson), the young ice skater, is somewhat baffling and could have been cut entirely.

The skiing and rock-climbing sequences are fairly exciting, as is the underwater battle in a sunken ship filled with corpses. Also good to see Bond and his girlfriend pottering about in a submersible.

As if all that wasn’t enough, some of the action scenes are accompanied by funky music.