Med City Movie Guy

You had me at “When I’m elected...”

If a seventeen-month campaign season isn’t enough for you, there’re always these DVDs...

    Come Tuesday night, only one party will win, but we can all celebrate the end of a nearly two-year campaign marathon with some of these election-themed films.

Primary Colors (1998)
    A surprisingly entertaining spoof -- or documentary depending on which insider you speak with – of Bill Clinton’s 1992 Presidential run. John Travolta is brilliant as Governor Jack Stanton and delivers wonderfully wry lines like, “I'm going to tell you something really outrageous. I'm going to tell you the truth.”

Bulworth (1998)
    Warren Beatty stars as Senator Jay Billington Bulworth, a veteran Democrat who, when his constituency finds his liberal views outdated, contracts to have himself assassinated then uses the short time he has left to frankly speak his mind without regard for consequences ... until those outbursts make him a media darling and his campaign is reenergized. Beatty’s best work since Ishtar. Hmmm, that’s not saying much. Since Reds ... since Madonna: Truth or Dare ... since Heaven Can Wait ...  Well, let’s just say it's one of Beatty’s best.

Bob Roberts (1992)
    A provocative mocumentary following fictional conservative senatorial candidate Bob Roberts (Tim Robbins) as he campaigns across Pennsylvania under the mantra, “The times they are a-changin’ back.” Humorous, of course, but also riveting as we watch the crafty pol carefully avoid being exposed for the fraud he so obviously is.

Man of the Year (2006)
    In this paean to populist politics, talk show host Tom Dobbs (Robin Williams) is recruited to run for President, hardly expecting a victory. But when a software glitch in the new electronic voting machine skews the results and delivers him one, he has to choose between a career as the jester or as the jestee.

Swing Vote (2008)
    A prosperously unlikely tie and a malformed ballot leave apathetic schlub Bud Johnson (Kevin Costner) casting the single “swing vote” that will decide a presidential election. Every vote counts, but apparently Bud’s counts more as each candidate targets their campaign messages specifically to him.

The Candidate (1972)
    If idealism was sugar, Robert Redford’s oratory would send viewers into a diabetic coma with his portrayal of liberal lawyer turned liberal candidate Bill McKay. Though the post-election victory quote, “What do we do now?” is considered iconic, the real question is: how would Jay Gatsby react to McKay’s ‘tax the rich’ policy?

 

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"W.” doesn’t beat around the Bush

Memo to Lefties who, under cover of the night, bravely hurl bags of dog doo into the beds of pickup trucks sporting Republican bumper stickers: you may want to skip Oliver Stone’s latest biopic, W.

     Stone, who invented the conspiracy genre with his 1991 film J.F.K., takes on the controversial life of another president, our 43rd, with haunting allusions to that famous dynasty. In one, Bush the Elder chides a young and partying George W, “Who do you think you are? A Kennedy?”
     The overtures don’t end there. Bush is a fundamentally decent guy who only wants to “make this a better and safer world for everyone,” Stone tells us. He just gave too much deference to the counsel of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney -- just as John Kennedy, before him, ceded to Robert McNamara and Lyndon Johnson sending 200,000 troops on what would become a protracted tour of duty in Vietnam.
     Though it may not satisfy partisans, W. is a remarkably fair and balanced commentary on a sitting president and his most critical decision told through dramatic and thoughtful deliberations reminiscent of The Missiles of October. It’s sure to appeal to historians, political moderates, and maybe even a few of the kind of guys who like to sit on innocuous Democratic door-to-door canvassers.

3 Honks

W. starring Josh Brolin, James Cromwell, and Richard Dreyfuss as a Dick Cheney caricature worthy of a "Saturday Night Live skit," is now playing at the Chateau and Wehrenberg theaters.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for language including sexual references, some alcohol abuse, smoking and brief disturbing war images.

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Beverly Hills Chihuahua (mini review)

A fun film with far too much Piper Perabo, far too little Jamie Lee Curtis, and just the right amount of (the voices of) Drew Barrymore and George Lopez.

No mas!

3 Honks
MPAA Rating: PG for some mild thematic elements.

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"Ember" glows but not brightly

The future depicted in the new film, City of Ember, is about as demoralizing to watch as the UBS stock ticker on South Broadway.

     In this adaptation of Jeanne DuPrau’s apocalyptic book, an underground city was built to sustain mankind for two hundred years to survive an imminent cataclysm. Unfortunately, over the generations, a locked case describing the way out was lost and the city’s resources are now running low.
     But City of Ember is filled with too many distracting political overtures. Some of the citizens of Ember, the “beacon of light in a world of darkness,” simply want out; others claim it is their duty to stay and fix their problems. Amidst them walk a robed sect content to sing while they wait for “the builder” to return and show them the way. Leading them all is a corrupt mayor who likes things the way they are. His solution: create a task force.
     While there’s plenty in the film to buoy any side’s political position, there’s very little for the actual moviegoer and at the end of the reel, City of Ember is just another glass-half-empty futuristic vision, less entertaining than Will Smith’s I Am Legend, but slightly better than Vin Diesel’s Babylon A.D. – all of which are honks behind Pixar’s WALL•E.

2 Honks
MPAA Rating: PG for mild peril and some thematic elements.

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In these worst of times, “An American Carol” is the best of times

There’s a great history lesson in An American Carol, the new political comedy starring Kevin Farley and Kelsey Grammer. No, not the one about Neville Chamberlain giving peace a chance by offering Czechoslovakia as an appeasement to a dangerous dictator. It’s a reminder that once upon a time humor didn’t have to be dulled by political correctness.

     David Zucker, who with partners Jim Abrahams and brother Jerry, gave us the 1980s classics Airplane! and Police Squad, brings us this wildly entertaining, and sometimes uncomfortably insolent, film that posits what our world might be like if the rabid left had their way and there were no wars.
     When anti-American filmmaker Michael Malone, a toned-down version of real filmmaker Michael Moore, wants to ban the 4th of July, he is visited by the ghosts of JFK, General Patton and George Washington who show him the consequences of his Anti-American liberalism: Hitler sings Kumbaya while storming Poland with his “campaign for change” and slavery still exists in America because Lincoln wouldn’t sacrifice 600,000 lives in the Civil War.
     Some have dismissed the movie as agitprop, focusing on its attack of the Left’s naivety and misguided efforts. But what An American Carol really spoofs is our guarded sense of humor, a funny-bone numbed by a generation of political correctness.
     Indeed, the film is offensive, irreverent and politically-maligning, but it’s also laugh out loud funny.

3 Honks
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for rude and irreverent content, and for language and brief drug material.

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