The Young Mr. Pitt (1942)

Europe is not to be saved by any single man. England, 1783. King George III appoints 24 year old William Pitt (Robert Donat) as prime minister. When members of Parliament refuse to take Pitt seriously, he calls for a general election and wins. He sets to work on a programme of reform, focusing on rebuilding the navy while across the sea in France, Napoleon Bonaparte (Herbert Lom) begins his conquest of Europe. After rejecting an alliance with France, he puts his own mind at ease by selecting Admiral Horatio Nelson (Stephen Haggard) to lead the fleet… Does the Minister propose to defeat Bonaparte by earnest consideration? It’s not the most typical of Carol Reed’s films – you won’t see the visual flourishes for which he would become distinguished even if Freddie Young is responsible for some fine cinematography here. It’s a fairly conventional biography, adapted by Launder and Gilliat from the book by the Viscount Castlerosse, who also contributes to the dialogue (with the parliamentary exchanges based on real speeches in Westminster) and it’s pleasingly busy with sharp lines and buzzing with character, Donat’s face registering as is his wont every injury and sorrow. He ages convincingly, his personal worries – romantic, financial – mirroring Napoleon’s onward march:  Conquerors are invariably upstarts. It’s significant that this was made during World War 2, with a call to arms against such individuals resonant throughout the rise of this iteration of Hitler (rather unfair to Napoleon, I think). This is a lively piece of work, ripe with history, boasting a great ensemble including Robert Morley as Charles Fox, John Mills as William Wilberforce and Phyllis Calvert as Eleanor Eden, with an amusing Albert Lieven playing Talleyrand.  Do not seek fame through war

Bad Moms (2016)

As a therapist, I’m not allowed to tell you what do to. But, uh, as a human being with two fucking eyes in my head, yeah I think you should get divorced as soon as possible. This is some catastrophic shit.Amy (Mila Kunis) has a great husband, overachieving children, beautiful home and  a successful career working for an infantile coffee entrepreneur. Unfortunately, she’s also overworked, exhausted and ready to snap. Fed up, she joins forces with two other stressed-out mothers Kiki (Kristen Bell)  and Carla (Kathryn Hahn) that she meets on the school run to get away from daily life and conventional responsibilities. As the gals go wild with their newfound freedom, they set themselves up for the ultimate showdown with PTA queen bee Gwendolyn (Christina Applegate) and her clique of seemingly perfect moms (Jada Pinkett Smith, Annie Mumolo) …  Quitting is for dads! Few films engage with the sheer drudgery and awfulness of domesticity, housekeeping and small children (Tully being an honourable exception) and having to go to kids’ sports events and feed them regularly and all that crap and holding down a job too and this is in your face with the sheer impossibility of ‘having it all’:  Helen Gurley Brown’s appellation even gets a visual nod. It’s genuinely enjoyable when Kunis simply refuses to make breakfast for her kids and leaves them to deal with it while she slobs out with a bag of Doritos; and when Bell strands her husband with their horrifically misbehaving offspring. Hahn has long been a comic star in waiting (Afternoon Delight didn’t quite do it) and she gets a big rollicking character here; Bell still hasn’t had a big screen role to match the TV genius of Veronica Mars (that film’s adaptation notwithstanding) but the arc from mouse to motherf**** suits her; while Kunis has been ploughing this sort of furrow for a while now, and she does it very well. It’s hardly classic comedy given some of the worn-out caricatures occasionally deployed but it’s well cast (including a good cameo from Wanda Sykes as the therapist) and a highly amusing and rowdy diversion in the dog days of summer. Written and directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, who were responsible for The Hangover.  I’m pretty sure my brother-in-law just joined ISIS and he’s a Jew

Vice (2018)

How does a man go on to become who he is? Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) is responding to 9/11 with other White House officials. We flash back and forth to his drunken antics as a young man, getting kicked out of Yale, his wife Lynne (Amy Adams) setting him on the straight and narrow when he’s a drunken linesman and then getting into Washington out of Wisconsin U as an intern to Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell) and seeing everything close up and personal during the Nixon era. Rumsfeld’s abrasiveness gets them distanced from the office, where Cheney overhears the President discussing the secret bombing of Cambodia with Kissinger (Kirk Bovill). His father in law appears to murder his mother in law (never investigated) and Cheney and Lynne form a tighter family unit. He becomes Chief of Staff to Gerald Ford (Bill Camp) while Rumsfeld is Secretary of Defence and he is introduced by Antonin Scalia (Matthew Jacob) to the Unitary Executive Theory. He has his first coronary while running to represent Wyoming and Lynne campaigns for his seat in the House of Representatives. He then becomes Secretary of Defence under George H. Bush during the Gulf War. When younger daughter Mary (Alison Pill) comes out, he resigns to prevent media scrutiny. He is CEO at Halliburton when George W. Bush (Sam Rockwell) asks him to be his running mate in 2000 but he demurs and says he’ll help select that individual. But when he satisfies himself that Bush Jr. is incompetent he gets him to promise that mundane issues like energy and foreign policy be left to him and he accepts the role and sets up offices in every possible executive area … He would be a dedicated and humble servant to power. How is it that some of the most penetrating films about politics have been made by comedy auteur Adam McKay? Is this the only way we can take our reality nowadays? Perhaps. This freewheeling exercise in postmodernism is incredibly formally inventive, audacious even, and the film actually stops and the credits roll for the first time at 47 minutes. And then we kickstart into the real story, once again, back to 9/11 and the film’s narrator (a great joke, by the way) asks us why on earth was Cheney having a private talk with his lawyer David Addington (Don McManus) in the middle of this unprecedented act of terror? Amid the family dramas, Iraq, Afghanistan, the War on Terror, Halliburton’s involvement, the Crash,and everything else that has beset the US since that date, Cheney was the real power behind the White House controlling everything, even the terms of public discourse – ‘global warming’ became ‘climate change’, and so on. Sometimes the synoptic approach is genuinely funny, sometimes it feels too episodic. The film is all about heart – heart attacks, a heart transplant, the heart of power and family. Cheney’s final monologue tells us what we already know and Bale offers a robust picture of a seemingly bland man pummeled into unchecked power by an ambitious wife who himself becomes an untameable and unstoppable juggernaut, he’s everywhere, all of the time, at every formative event in recent Republican Party history. It’s a jigsaw puzzle moving backwards and forwards through the decades that pieces together how one person’s worldview came to predominate in the culture. Irreverent, entertaining and fairly shocking, this will make you laugh and hurl, sometimes simultaneously. Vice is the word. You have to remember that if you have power people will try to take it away from you – always

Long Shot (2019)

I look like Cap’n Crunch’s Grindr date! Fred Flarsky (Seth Rogen) is a daring if shambling journalist favouring the Democrats who has a knack for getting into trouble. We meet him infiltrating a White Power group where he gets identified as a Jewish leftwing writer and he jumps out a first-floor window to escape their wrath halfway through getting a Swastika tattoo. Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron) is one of the most influential women in the world – the US Secretary of State, a smart, sophisticated and accomplished politician who needs to up her ratings to succeed her boss, TV star President Chambers (Bob Odenkirk). Her polling improves every time she’s photographed with the goofy Canadian Prime Minister (Alexander Skarsgard) as she’s counselled to do at every opportunity by her advisor Maggie (June Diane Raphael). When Fred unexpectedly runs into Charlotte at a party his best friend Lance (O’Shea Jackson Jr) takes him to after he’s left his Brooklyn alt-weekly following a takeover by the repulsive mogul Parker Wembly (Andy Serkis), he finds himself in the company of his former baby sitter and childhood crush. When Charlotte decides to make a run for the presidency she hires Fred as her speechwriter to up the funny factor – much to the dismay of her entourage as she’s embarking on a world tour to persuade leaders to sign up to her programme to save The Bees, The Trees and The Seas and he joins them on the road …  I’m a racist. You’re a Republican. I don’t know what is wrong with me. As a product of the adolescent house of Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg you might think this had a gross out element and it does – any film that could have its leading man ultimately labelled The Come Guy has taken a turn in that direction (hence the title). But it’s the getting there that is astonishingly well put together. The stereotypes here are all too recognisable: the woman who can handle herself, and the man who … handles himself in a very particular way; the WASPy politician who has to deal with a doofus Commander in Chief who himself takes his cues from his TV show as the US President (Odenkirk is very good) along with a toothy Canadian jerk PM (Skarsgard sportingly sports buck teeth) similarly looking for a viable political romance, not to mention the hourly misogyny dealt her by an astonishingly sexist TV channel;  the shabbily dressed leftwing Jewish journo (in another time he’d have been part of the counterculture) who learns the hard way that maturing requires a deal of compromise which he only realises when his best friend admits he’s not just a Republican – but a Christian to boot – and then has the lightbulb moment that he is in his own way a racist and a sexist, everything he despises. Therefore beneath this very funny, role-reversing political comedy about two people who want the impossible – a relationship of equals – is a plea to see things from the other side’s point of view.  He needs to grow up, she needs to be reminded of the passionate truth-teller she used to be so they both teach each other valuable lessons. The big political crisis is solved after Fred has given Charlotte her first taste of MDMA (she thinks it’s called The Molly) so that a hostage-taking disaster is averted when she’s off her skull. This is very much of its time, the potshots are relevant and smart if obvious, the sex scenes are hilarious (she has a better time, quicker, and apologises, just like a guy), and the timing is exquisite. And no, it’s not the intellectual wordfest of The West Wing nor does it attempt the kind of fireworks we might wish for from the classic Thirties screwballs but it has its own rhythm and nuance with flawless performances even if the satire isn’t as up to the second as we require in the Twitterverse. There is, though, a teal rain jacket and those Game of Thrones references. Principally it works because of its humanity but it also ploughs a furrow of Nineties nostalgia – bonding over Roxette and Boyz II Men – as well as boasting an environmental message and emitting a howl against media conglomerates and rightwing hatemongers. At its centre is a couple trying to make things work while working together in a horribly public situation with the politics regularly giving way to charming encounters where the stars play against type. That’s clever screenwriting, by Dan Sterling and Liz Hannah. Deftly directed by Jonathan Levine, this epitomises all that is right, left and wrong about the American political scene with a hugely optimistic message at its core about the State of the Union. Highly entertaining with an awesome Theron taking charge. We totally almost just died

The Candidate (1972)

Any man running for the Senate has to want something.  Without a candidate to run for the California senate seat against admired Republican Crocker Jarmon (Don Porter), Democrat campaign manager Marvin Lucas (Peter Boyle) recruits charismatic leftist lawyer and environmental activist Bill McKay (Robert Redford). His father is the former State Governor John (Melvyn Douglas) and it’s doubtful he’s going to turn out for his son. McKay’s appearance piques the public’s interest despite his own contempt for anything bar conveying the major issues of the day – poverty, race, pollution. He hasn’t a hope and is as cynical as the team running him so he can just say what he wants. But as he becomes more popular Lucas pushes McKay toward a more palatable centrist message. As McKay’s original and honest platform gets watered down and he sleeps with a groupie, his liberal ideas vanish, and his original take on politics becomes generic and repetitive. His popularity increases so much that he is running even with Jarmon as Election Day approaches and his father backs him as he seems to be gaining the swing vote… Vote once vote twice on election day for Bill McKay! Redford re-teamed with his Downhill Racer director Michael Ritchie to make this scathing satire of political campaigning and it was partly inspired by Ritchie’s time working for the 1970 campaign of Senator John V. Turney. Jeremy Larner’s screenplay is smart:  he had been speechwriter for Senator Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 Presidential run so the action and the attitudes reek of authenticity. Redford is ideal as a poster boy politician in an image-based campaign as he succumbs to the corrupting lure of attention. As a snapshot of the frustration of the era (Vietnam only comes up once in debate) it still has traction today. What do we do now?

 

 

 

Our Brand is Crisis (2015)

Taking a comical look at the US’s interfering with the electoral process in South America is a big leap from pure comedy into cutting edge satire:  not something for which either screenwriter Peter Straughan or director David Gordon Green are known. This version of a 2002 election in Bolivia which saw James Carville’s company deployed to get a problematic President Pedro Gallo (Joaquim de Almeida) re-elected is somewhat botched both in concept and execution. Sandra Bullock is the anchor of this mismanaged screenplay as the alcoholic depressive retired consultant drafted in to help defeat Victor Rivera, who’s being advised by her arch-rival, Billy Bob Thornton. They have history. It’s not pleasant. She suffers brutal altitude sickness and believes the candidate is hopeless until she pulls out her Machiavelli handbook and gets to work. There’s some fun – physical and verbal – but it’s not really sharp enough to score points. It substitutes a soft centre for what should have been scathing political commentary. And the cinematography is horrible.

Weiner (2016)

A fly on the wall account of the NYC politician whose dick pix have supplied The New York Post with so many great headlines – the most recent being The Stroking Gun (subtitled: Dickileaks) after his computers were seized and used by the head of the FBI to derail Hillary Clinton’s Presidential run 10 days ago. It’s all apparently in the name (mispronunciation notwithstanding) as the 2011 revelations of his Twitter-ised selfies didn’t stunt his progress and this 2013 mayoral election campaign features uncomfortable exchanges, cringe-making behaviour and utterly tawdry conversations with an individual who has no filter or apparent understanding of himself or anything else besides. Directors Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg just let the cameras roll – until Huma Abedin, Weiner’s wife and Clinton’s right-hand woman, finally asks them to stop during one especially embarrassing argument. It becomes clear that he has continued sexting pictures and one 23-year old recipient is all over the media (tattooed back and all – how would people see it I wonder …?) ready to doorstep Weiner and his wife after he’s got a rotten 4.9% in the election and de Blasio is being sworn in by Bill Clinton. This is a film about judgement. And how bad it is for everyone concerned (did Hillary never think about the optics? Bet Chelsea’s not surprised about her ‘second daughter’!) and the end credits provide the topper … that following the conclusion there were more pictures this past Summer and Abedin finally separated from him. We don’t see them of course – but apparently the most offensive had a bulging crotch beside his sleeping son. No. No judgement! Gruesome.