VICE (2018 where Christian Bale is Dick... Dick Cheney)

In all honesty, I cannot think of the last time I disliked a film enough that I left angry (at the film, at the people who made it, at the people who like it--towards whomever or whatever it is that you're supposed to be angry). That's not necessarily a good thing; I guess I just don't care enough anymore to feel that way. That's reflected in my ratings on the "last (x)" thread. Most everything I see falls into the 6/6.5/7 range.

Bale should really stop taking himself so damn seriously and make a comedy.

time for a Bale/DDL buddy cop comedy imho

with Shelley Long and orangutan as co-stars

Brendan James offers a sorta-quasi-defense (I have no stance as yet, though I might see it tomorrow):

The negative reviews instead tend to focus on McKay’s job as writer and director. One of the most common complaints relates to his understanding of politics and the resulting portrayal of Cheney. A representative critique comes from national security writer and onetime Iraq War supporter Fred Kaplan, who declares that the director is out of his depth: “McKay reportedly read some very good books about Cheney . . . but his own grasp of Washington politics is thin.”

Kaplan calls the film an example of Lenin’s term “infantile leftism” (a phrase that does not mean what he thinks it does). In this reading, Vice “fails as history” by treating Cheney & Co. as power-hungry opportunists rather than sincere ideological mandarins. He cites a scene in which a young Cheney asks Rumsfeld, “what do we believe?” which leaves the latter doubled over laughing:

"The film portrays Cheney’s political ambition as entirely cynical, geared toward nothing but power for its own sake. […] In fact both men, especially Cheney, were deeply conservative. To discount their ideological impulses gives them too little credit for their egregious actions."

Sure, the cynicism in that scene is played up for laughs. But the fact is that, like Rumsfeld (once known as a pain in Nixon’s ass for pushing for an end to the Vietnam War), Cheney embraced a jumble of principles and positions throughout his entire career. He was, at different moments in his life, a budget hawk, a "deficits-don't-matter" guy, a practitioner of realpolitik, and, finally, an insatiable warmaker. In a strange pattern, each ideological shift happened to enable a new way for him to advance his career, enrich his allies, and expand US hegemony.

https://jewishcurrents.org/review/mission-not-accomplished-vice/

I left early. I knew how it ended

Kaplan calls the film an example of Lenin’s term “infantile leftism” (a phrase that does not mean what he thinks it does).

lol

Worst post-credits scene of all time.

Probably funded by the Bush family.

Amy Adams' Lynne Cheney telling amassed Wyoming cowboys that she's for keeping her bra ON! [cheers]

ttly agree w lots said upthread, i liked the big short & generally like mckay but applying those techniques did not work and prob wasnt a good idea here

the plemmons naration/reveal is also just not a cogent idea imo

also, minor but idk what or why it would be phrased how it was -- one of the final displayed statements re: the yoo memo -- the text shown read something like "this memo is still on DOJ computers to this day" uh ok, you mean its installed like microsoft office ?

complete dogshit

McKay should be flayed for the "Shakespeare scene" alone

meanwhile this review makes me wish I liked it more

Our fascination for Cheney may ebb and flow, but throughout the film, Vice never equivocates on the fact that he is the enemy. It’s telling that there are no heroes in the story of Washington power games from 2000 to 2008: it should come as no surprise that McKay is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, part of a growing movement that sees the economic and foreign policies of mainstream Democrats and Republicans, not as opposed to one another, so much as variations on a theme.9 As a bellwether, Vice stands alongside Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You—another imaginative and flawed film that aims to instruct popular audiences about the nature of power under capitalism, not just alongside, but through entertainment. If in the end, it's only the sum of its parts and not more, Vice remains an energizing experiment, one that contorts itself according to audience, influence, subject, style; a bewildering reflection on a moment of bewilderment—a Permanent Now extending from 9/11 to today, a state of emergency that some among our leadership seem adamant to bring to the swiftest and bloodiest possible end. Nevertheless, a reckless pursuit of such a vision can, at times, be too difficult to distinguish from a lack of control, and a theory-driven provocation of the audience can often feel, in practice, like disregard. A glorious neoprogressive cinema remains, alas, still in the wings.

https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/the-compleat-angler-adam-mckay-s-vice

I didn't really glean the "no heroes" element while watching it, but at the same time, it's not entirely radical to have no heroes in a movie about U.S. politics.

an energizing experiment, say

a bewildering reflection on a moment of bewilderment—a Permanent Now extending from 9/11 to today, a state of emergency

this is otm and why i found the movie so depressing

I don't usually have particularly strong adverse reactions to films but fuck this hacky, lazy piece of shit film.

Around halfway through, when the Macbeth scene kicked in and we got the credits rolling, I started to think that the hackiness was maybe part of the point, and then as the film continued I realised that was just to deflect from how bad the writing was.

Rockwell was pretty great as Dubya but casting likeable doofuses like him and Carrell just made me feel like the film was trying to exonerate everyone that wasn't Cheney. It just felt clumsy and dishonest.

this was fine, bale is good in it and its about as accurate and weighty as youd expect from watching the big short.

You take that back