Movie Details
| Title: | Vice | |
| Director: | Adam McKay | |
| Year: | 2018 | |
| Genre: | Biopic | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 12.12.20 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (8)
- Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
- Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
- Anchorman: Wake-Up Ron Burgundy
- The Big Short
- Don't Look Up
- The Other Guys
- Step Brothers
- Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 12.12.20 | Internet | This Screening is part of event: DVRfest 2020 As we move into the fourth and final day of the fest, the programming takes an even more political tone. In this case, I figured this would be a good movie but the whole comedic-take-on-serious-matters genre of movies like Big Short, Recount, Too Big to Fail... they are all pretty similar in format and ultimately depressing because they point out weak moments in our near past. I suppose the reason for doing so is valid but I also think it's mostly preaching to the choir and they never result in any actual change. I'm sure there will be a Trump movie at some point, either in serious Oliver Stone or comedic Adam McKay style that points out how crazy things were but I also suspect it'll fall into the same bin as all these movies. Pessimistically, I fear that the problems we've made for ourselves will not go away any time soon and an entertaining movie will not fix them. But leaving all of that behind, this movie was pretty good. It is kinda like a melding between The Big Short and W, but in a well-done way. I like the few 4th-wall-ish jokes that they put in there like the Shakespearean scene and the fake ending and, as usual in this type of movie, the case is great and deep. It's fun to see so many good actors and actresses in the same project. I do feel like Amy Adams, Elizabeth Banks, and Joan Allen all have basically the same exact role in their respective movies, but I guess that's just what happens when you're playing the wife of the biopic's subject. This does paint a particularly bleak portrait of the guy and lays an awful lot of blame on his shoulders for just the sake of power. The brief direct address at the end (a la Goodfellas) wasn't enough for me to get any sense of his agenda or point of view. I suspect that was the hardest thing to find in their research (and the point of the previously-mentioned Shakespearean scene) so I can understand where they're coming from... but it's still a bummer that the best guess anyone has is that he's always been a piece of shit and just got very good at it. One final comment here. Where was the scene with Cheney slapping his belly? I guess that was the one piece of footage really selling how much weight Bale put on? But they didn't leave it in the final cut? I feel like they didn't just use it in the trailers but also whenever the movie was mentioned during award season? It's like the one shot I remembered about this movie going into it. I hate that. Anyway, next up is a doc that I kinda don't want to see but feel like I've heard so so many great things about it that I really should. I've been putting it off for quite a while but that's what this festival is all about, so let's do it. |
