Posted: 12/30/18 at 6:06pm
Caught this today and found it smart, thrilling, and engaging. Fantastic performances all around. Loved Rockwell as W. Bush, but wished that he had more screen time. Anyone else seen this?
Posted: 12/31/18 at 1:28am
I found it to be smart and engaging as well. Well-directed with a terrific ensemble cast. The standouts for me were Christian Bale as Cheney and Steve Carrell as Rumsfeld. Both deserve Oscar nods and maybe wins.
Posted: 1/1/19 at 3:09pm
Posted: 1/7/19 at 7:52pm
I loved Christian Bale's acceptance speech at the Globes last night. Thanking Satan for the inspiration to play such an evil character - geniuis!
Posted: 1/13/19 at 2:26pm
Finally saw this in a theater last week. As a big fan of THE BIG SHORT, I was thinking Adam Mackay would be just the right director to serve up the Cheney legacy on a platter. Turns out all the excellent acting in the world couldn't salvage the dark miserable story this movie had to recreate to get to the final blackout.
I thought going in that the snarky tone Mackay is known for would soften the blows, but honestly found the snark so overboard here (could George W have really been such a complete doofus during his presidency?) that those terrible years were even worse to live through on screen than they had been to live through in real life. Hats off to Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Steve Carell for finding some flickers of recognizable humanity within their monstrous portrayals. But monsters they all seemed to be. Coming out of this movie I just needed a shower.
S P O I L E R S * * * S P O I L E R S * * *
Two absolute brilliant scenes deserve mention: The pause after Act II, pre-9-11, when all seems hunky dory with the world and Mackay starts the actual credit roll as if a happier movie could have ended right there. And then there's the final beat where Cheney turns directly to the camera to spit out his self-serving defense of all the actions we've been watching. Smart and pithy, both hilarious and chilling. I wish the rest of the movie had stayed on that level.
Posted: 1/15/19 at 3:39pm
I felt like I couldn't get clean for 24 hours after seeing it. And I'm a fella who LOVED The Big Short and thought the style might work well with these odious people. But it was a horrible time and barely in the past so sitting with it all again while it was fresh in the memory was gross, no matter how great the technical aspects and the assembled cast.
Also, Allison Pill is just inherently likable, which means her portrayal of the lesbian daughter wasn't accurate at all. The movie did make a subversive point probably unintentionally, but it's a message to queer people that resonates truthfully: Your conservative friends and relatives will let you fill in the blanks of the things they never quite get around to talking to you about, letting you think they will always have your back. But they won't.
The night after seeing Vice I saw "Into The Spider-Verse" which was a perfect palate cleanser.
Vice mini-spoiler:
Tyler Perry was all wrong and they should have gone all the way and had Medea do Condi Rice.
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