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 Christian Bale, as per usual, went extreme method for this role and put on weight (+prosthetics) and plays DICK CHENEY, one of the most hosed up, soulless, heartless, cold, etc etc human beings on the goddamn planet. The dude was able to finesse his way into power. We all remember those stories about him shooting that guy at a ranch that one time and just in general being a huge rear end in a top hat. But I feel like he's been very low key, and history has treated him low key (or completely ignored by many). Anyway Adam McKay is back with this film after The Big Short and this movie shares a lot of similarities with that one.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g09a9laLh0k quote:Gov. George W. Bush of Texas picks Dick Cheney, the CEO of Halliburton Co., to be his Republican running mate in the 2000 presidential election. No stranger to politics, Cheney's impressive résumé includes stints as White House chief of staff, House Minority Whip and defense secretary. When Bush wins by a narrow margin, Cheney begins to use his newfound power to help reshape the country and the world. I saw this movie last night and was surprised to see no thread for it at all here so I decided to make one to discuss this movie. Its apparently very polarizing! I very much enjoyed the movie and got VERY ANGRY after watching it, just remembering like oh yeah I forgot about all this hosed up poo poo that went down in the early 2000s (and even before too!). I personally feel its one of the most important films of the year alongside Sorry to Bother You. Anyway yeah I'd like to discuss this movie and some of scenes and the tone and just overall the entire vibe and core messages of the movie. The whole focus group thing really stuck out to me since I feel we are increasingly being marketed too and sold all this poo poo the powers that be want us to buy (or support like the loving invasion of the Iraq war).
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Dec 27, 2018 23:08
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| # ? May 4, 2024 12:27 |
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I think it's a very important movie that names the actual problem with the Republican Party as well as the broader diminishing of our nation's checks and balances. Bale's performance is a good one that finds humanity, But it's still a very messy and undisciplined movie. There are audacious touches and visual gags like the fake credits, the narration, and the fish lure scenes that work very well. But the movie also oddly glosses over Haliburton and Bush Sr's presidency. The credits scene seems indulgent as do a few of the cutaways. Timeless Appeal fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Dec 29, 2018 |
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Dec 27, 2018 23:47
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Timeless Appeal posted:I think it's a very important movie that names the actual problem with the Republican Party as well as the broader diminishing of our nation's checks and balances. Bale's performance is a good one that finds humanity I also wish they had expanded on these things as well. I keep seeing a lot of complaints that this movie humanizes Cheney too much but I really don't think it did. Like yeah he accepts his daughter coming out to him, but by the end of the movie he allows the sister to throw her under the bus just to keep power.
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Dec 29, 2018 01:36
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There is a key scene early on in the film where he recognizes the hypocrisy of Nixon's handling of Vietnam, and understands in vivid detail the consequences of Nixon's actions. The purpose of this moment is to make it clear that when Cheney gains executive power that he does so with no naiveté. It's a movie that often folds time in on itself, and this is one of those moments. While W apologists can try to distort a vision of Bush as being well-intended with Iraq that doesn't extend to Cheney. Vice's core belief is that Cheney is someone who always knew what he was doing. He's not a psychopath or an ideologue, but a man who values powers over everything else. The sting of betraying his daughter hurts so much more because you know that he knows it's the wrong thing to do.
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Dec 29, 2018 01:53
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I went to this expecting the reviews to be from people who still were butt hurt from the Bush administration, much like most of the reviews I saw online. What I saw was even worse. This is probably the shittiest movie I have ever paid money to see. It makes me never want to go to the theaters ever again. The script was written by a reddit thread for whatever got the most upvotes. The cutaways were basically memes to completely unrelated ham fisted analogies that a 13 year old would find deep. Christian Bale did a pretty good job of imitating Chaney's mannerisms, but everyone else in the film needs to be blacklisted. Did you know that virtuous people kept repeating democratic platitudes but bad people just revered their inner thoughts to manipulate the people?!?! I felt like every line from a heel in the film should have been followed by them shouting " EHL-OH-EHL". War is bad. If you do not believe so, cut away to a loud explosion in a peaceful village where everyone is playing with kids as subsistence farmers. The loudness drives it home. I'm sad they didn't use the opportunity to show Scott Rogers screaming :No Blood for oil!" on the ground in a bloody ruin. They really showed a lack of opportunity. If this movie was directed by a second year film student, it would be a C at best.
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Dec 29, 2018 07:27
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I think what kills me the most about this movie is that it feels like it revels in the fact that everything this dude did had absolutely no consequences for him whatsoever. That last little angry monologue that basically just extends that one cocky rear end interview that we all saw is just the extra little kick in the balls because you know that's exactly what that dude believes/justifies with. It's hard to like by default because I don't think I've ever heard anyone try and defend Cheney once. That mid credits thing was the epitome of all the poo poo I hated about this movie though, 100% Watch this movie win a bunch of awards somehow.
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Dec 30, 2018 20:30
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Sounds like it indulges all of the worst aspects of The Big Short, an obnoxious, preachy snl sketch of a movie held together by a great Christian Bale performance.
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Dec 30, 2018 21:41
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All I'm going to say about Vice is that it really is openly hostile towards Dick Cheney right down to him giving a literal "gently caress you" speech to the audience at the end over everything he did and even before that is in no way nuanced towards it. There were also a lot of small things glossed over like the Plame Affair which gets a quick shout-out which is insane given how that whole ordeal exposed Cheney's influence more than anything. I ended up watching it as a black comedy more than any kind of biopic given how I was a big critic over everything Dubya did during his reign of terror.
Justin Godscock fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Dec 31, 2018 |
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Dec 31, 2018 01:34
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Just some thoughts I had about Vice corresponding with a friend over it: "McKay's polemics aren't really partisan, that's the thing. Like, yes, Dick and Lynne and all their cohorts are definitely villains in the film; but McKay does not offer that there are countervailing 'heroes' who function as a practical or even willing opposition. The closest you get is Jimmy Carter putting solar panels on the white house, but even that is just set up for the punchline where the panels are later removed completely out of spite. In the meantime, however, you get Hillary Clinton joining the saber-rattling rabble to invade Iraq. The point is not that, "The Republicans are bad, support their opposition." The point is that, "The Republicans are bad, and there IS NO OPPOSITION." The Democrats aren't invisible because the Republicans are just so powerful. They are invisible because there is no fundamental ideological contention at stake, no conflict of interests. Where the film is compromised is the extent to which that it articulates this vision so fervently that it merely heightens the contradiction of how the liberal progressivism can so firmly win the cultural war, but lose the political front so stupendously. You'll notice references to Fox News and the reality program "Survivor," but none of, say, the horrific "Rally to Restore Sanity." The ability of the Republicans to so successfully pursue a vulturous imperial and economic agenda, simply by adopting industrial market-testing strategies, necessarily implies that there is some 'essence' of the culture that is giving these ideas popular mandate. But the logic in this evaporates the moment you splice in, like, John Stewart comparing Dick Cheney to Darth Vader. The film implicitly treats politics as being downwind of culture. This is a prevailing myth of liberal-centrism, that the clobbering victories of the right stem from some fundamental mandate of the culture held by the majority of Americans. But such myths have never been substantiated and never will, because the reality is that most people understand politicians to be crooks and liars in general, and most of them are completely alienated from the democratic process. The issue with "Vice" is not in any sense its partisanship. The problem is precisely that, like the sputtering Daily Show bit, the joke doesn't go far enough. This wasn't the "dirtbag Left" movie needed to really un-package just how vile recent American history has been."
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Dec 31, 2018 04:59
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Vice is not a good movie and I think consensus emerging in threads reflects my opinions. That being said Steve Carell was really entertaining as Rumsfeld and there was something I found funny about Tyler Perry playing Colin Powell.
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Jan 2, 2019 03:55
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bullet3 posted:Sounds like it indulges all of the worst aspects of The Big Short, an obnoxious, preachy snl sketch of a movie held together by a great Christian Bale performance. That about sums it up. Went way too long but I liked the casting of Sam Rockwell.
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Jan 2, 2019 05:22
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Halo14 posted:That about sums it up. Went way too long but I liked the casting of Sam Rockwell. I thought so as well. He should have been able to write his own lines.
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Jan 2, 2019 07:15
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The only thing I couldn't stand about this movie was the ongoing gag of (honestly not sure if this is really even a spoiler, but) the fly constantly out of focus flying around the frame. After the 3rd or 4th time it was just incredibly distracting, and I expected more of a payoff at the end of the film with that but there wasn't one. Otherwise I really enjoyed it, but left feeling angry and a bit depressed. gently caress Dick Cheney.
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Jan 2, 2019 17:27
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Timeless Appeal posted:There is a key scene early on in the film where he recognizes the hypocrisy of Nixon's handling of Vietnam, and understands in vivid detail the consequences of Nixon's actions. This was on point. This was also a very mixed movie. Reminded me both of Fahrenheit 911 and darkest hour. And I didn't particularly like either. Darkest hour obviously because of the great performance of the lead... But also because of the real pacing problems. Fahrenheit because of the shallow attempts at manipulation through use of 911 and Iraq war clips... And also characters claiming it's the exact truth while actually playing very fast and loose. I had to search for a long time to be convinced that no, its not likely that anyone knows if Cheney's donor is an Iraq or Afghanistan vet. I will say that I liked a lot of those performances. Amy Adams, Steve Carrell, Tyler Perry, Sam Rockwell, all tremendous to say nothing of Christian Bale. And I liked how they looked at the rise of ISIL, giving the right people the blame. Yeah, very mixed.
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Jan 6, 2019 05:22
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Put me on the list of people who felt kinda angry after watching this. I had just started my first year of college when 9/11 happened, and I remember this whole sequence of events as what made me realize that the government would literally lie to our faces if they thought it would be useful. I am embarrassed to say that I legitimately believed there were terrorist camps and WMDs in Iraq that we needed to go after, and I remember being furious when it came out that they'd made Colin Powell go up and lie to the UN in front of a world audience. It sucks to look back and realize just how well they snowed me over.
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Jan 7, 2019 04:56
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i enjoyed the big short the same way i enjoyed inside job — a didactic but digestible explanation of all the bad poo poo wall street did and does. not really necessary for people who followed the crisis from the beginning, but that's not the intended audience anyway. this loving sucked though. aside from the fake credits sequence the creative touches fell flat, the performances were snl-caliber impression work (even rockwell and bale) and that mid-credits scene was a total embarrassment. i'll disagree with a poster above and say yes, the movie does posit the carters as "good guys" which is absolutely loving nuts.
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Jan 10, 2019 09:55
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So I watched this today and based on reviews expected it to be not very good. It's fine. Not nearly as good as The Big Short, but fine enough. I feel like most of the criticism I'm hearing is that he's too mean to Dick Cheney or not mean enough, which entirely misses the point. The story is not even totally about Cheney. The fake end credits sequence sets up a sort of Mulholland Drive switch moment where the last act of the movie changes perspective from Dick Cheney as unlikely protagonist to a Citizen Kane reading where it's revealed what he intended when he accumulated all the power previously denied to him by circumstance. As in, we could almost forgive Cheney's Machiavellian plotting and talent for palace intrigue if it led to anything good. He might have saved the world instead of damning it if his heart wasn't two sizes too small. Like every robber baron, his only thought for power is to accumulate more of it, without concern for consequences. However, I never thought Bale or Rockwell did much of anything but look like Dick Cheney and Bush. The actual Dick Cheney has stage presence, and doesn't strike me as a quietly stoic half-whisperer.
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Jan 28, 2019 08:00
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I just watched this on Hulu. What a very strange movie with a very strange tone.
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Jun 20, 2019 07:08
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I read somewhere that VICE is like someone adapting a Bertolt Brecht play, in that it's a cautionary tale as to why you shouldn't try to adapt a Bertolt Brecht play.
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Jun 20, 2019 07:22
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I didn't dislike it. I enjoyed it. I just can't even begin to imagine the creative thought process behind a lot of it. It was sort of a mess, but that has some sort of charm. Just a very strange film with wild stylistic and tonal shifts that throw you pretty hard. But it's not bad, IMO.
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Jun 20, 2019 07:29
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