|
Post by RhodoraO on Dec 30, 2018 5:16:39 GMT
Another analytical thread
|
|
|
Post by RhodoraO on Jan 1, 2019 3:23:49 GMT
An interesting discussion of how Bale compares to last year's Oldman (for Churchill).
|
|
|
Post by RhodoraO on Jan 6, 2019 5:17:58 GMT
|
|
|
Post by RhodoraO on Jan 6, 2019 5:20:45 GMT
|
|
|
Post by RhodoraO on Jan 8, 2019 12:11:32 GMT
|
|
|
Post by RhodoraO on Jan 8, 2019 21:33:40 GMT
|
|
|
Post by RhodoraO on Jan 12, 2019 19:53:49 GMT
An interesting and, imo, accurate read on the movie by Icana Brehas for Verve. www.vervezine.com/home/2019/1/11/the-anxious-and-urgent-freak-out-art-of-2018-ivana-brehasThe films of 2018 were no strangers to turmoil, either. A cacophony of arresting and traumatic imagery constitutes much of Adam McKay’s Vice, with editor Hank Corwin cutting the film at a feverish pace and splicing in footage of bombings and torture like they’re horror-movie jump scares. Such a viewing experience is brutal and viscerally unsettling, but this effect is clearly intentional — pulling us out of willfully ignorant comfort zones through unflinching exposure to the realities of the Iraq war. Once again, life-and-death stakes dominate any desire for stylistic “cleanliness” or refinement. Everything here is frenzied and extremely alarmed, evoking a sense of crisis. It’s as if the unspeakable horror of its subject matter has rendered the film itself formally unhinged — a kind of post-traumatic style.
|
|
|
Post by RhodoraO on Jan 13, 2019 1:59:03 GMT
Read the whole thread, guys.
|
|
|
Post by RhodoraO on Jan 15, 2019 0:51:49 GMT
|
|
|
Post by RhodoraO on Jan 16, 2019 10:48:35 GMT
Peter Travers' 4 star review from Dec 17,2018: www.google.com/amp/s/www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-reviews/vice-movie-review-christian-bale-769353/amp/On the direction/story: Adam McKay’s flamethrowing take on the rise and rise of Dick Cheney, played by a truly unrecognizable Christian Bale, is bound to be polarizing. In Vice, the writer-director is tossing grenades every which way — it’s a movie that’s ferociously funny one minute, bleakly sorrowful the next. The see-sawing is sure to piss off left-wingers who know Cheney’s a prick and want to see the movie bury his ass. The far right will bristle because McKay shows us that the America that made the power-mad Dick also helped produce the enraged Cheeto currently occupying the Oval Office. So who the hell is Vice for? At times, the film itself seems unsure. - It’s that irresistible irreverence that lifts Vice above the herd of most biopics. ... Comic distance proves necessary in a film that turns deadly serious. - Why do McKay and Bale allow Cheney to show traces of humanity? From what’s onscreen, it’s to measure what gets lost when empathy surrenders to expediency and morality capitulates to power. - Bale: Bale finds the conflicted essence of Cheney over four decades of turbulent history.
|
|
|
Post by RhodoraO on Jan 19, 2019 15:39:26 GMT
From NYTimes' Anatomy of a Scene: www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/movies/vice-scene-adam-mckay.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimesartsA phone call. A quiet exchange between husband and wife. A dog painting. On the surface, this scene from the Dick Cheney biopic “Vice” may seem a bit mundane. But a more low-key moment, in a film full of zany ones (A. O. Scott called the movie“a hectic blend of psychohistory, domestic drama and sketch-comedy satire”), turns out to be seismic. About that phone call: It comes at a point when Cheney’s life seems to be heading in a more serene direction. But the call ends up taking him on a U-turn right back to Washington. Narrating the scene, the writer-director Adam McKay (“The Big Short”) said he wanted everything in the film to slow down at that moment. In the call, and in the conversation that Cheney has with his wife, Lynne (Amy Adams), the drama is found in his silences. And regarding that dog painting, McKay said it was already in the house that they used for this shoot (a home he said that Kim Kardashian and Kanye West once considered buying). It’s of an eager little dog barking at a big dog with a stick. McKay saw it as symbol of the relationship between George W. Bush and his vice president. “Cheney’s this big dog, but the little dog thinks he’s in charge,” he said.
|
|
|
Post by RhodoraO on Jan 19, 2019 17:02:39 GMT
From A. O. Scott's NYtimes review, DEC 17, 2018: ‘Vice’ Review: Dick Cheney and the Negative Great Man Theory of History
<u>About the movie / direction<u/>:
Revulsion and admiration lie as close together as the red and white stripes on the American flag, and if this is in some respects a real-life monster movie, it’s one that takes a lively and at times surprisingly sympathetic interest in its chosen demon.
-
[The] story ... is a hectic blend of psychohistory, domestic drama and sketch-comedy satire bound together by McKay’s ingenuity and indignation.
-
The pace is jaunty, the scenes crackle with gleeful, giddy incredulity, and the dry business of statecraft attains the velocity of farce.
-
As biography, in other words, the movie works pretty well. As history, though, it’s another story — at once tendentious and undercooked, proposing a reductive, essentially conspiratorial account of recent events.
<u> On Bale's performance <u/>:
Bale, thickening and graying before our eyes, burrows into the personality of a shrewd operator endowed with whatever the opposite of charisma might be.
<u> Mid-credits scene <u/>:
It’s hard to know whether this represents hypocrisy or penitence on McKay’s part, but the idea that someone can’t care about both politics and popular culture is dubious at best. At worst, it’s a sneer directed at the audience, an expression of contempt for the public that the movie seems to share with its designated villain.
|
|
|
Post by RhodoraO on Jan 19, 2019 17:52:27 GMT
Todd McCarthy's THR review: www.google.com/amp/s/www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/review/vice-review-1166477Film/direction: ... the surface treatment can seem prankish and outrageous, but beneath the foolishness lies grave consequence. This is, in other words, a dead-serious comedy, one that grapples with history and why things went the way they did, with a hungry conviction. - Even though the film is devastating in its assessments of Cheney's attitudes and decisions, it's so buoyant, its general mood so exhilarating, that it rarely seems like it's resorting to cheap shots or gags for effect. It's the work of a great, mordant tragi-comedian, someone whose primary skills lie in humor but, as he's grown as an artist, has learned to plant his satiric skills in fertile dramatic soil. - Bale: The actor has the posture and body language down perfectly, as well as the look in the eyes that can be at once genial and steely.
|
|
|
Post by RhodoraO on Jan 19, 2019 18:14:46 GMT
From Owen Glieberman's Variety review: www.google.com/amp/s/variety.com/2018/film/reviews/vice-review-christian-bale-amy-adams-dick-cheney-1203085211/amp/Film/direction: ... even when he’s playing it straight, which is most of the time, McKay treats the movie as a slightly cracked burlesque. He turns history into a rollicking circus for liberals, inviting us to revel in Dick Cheney’s Greatest Hits Of Infamy. “Vice” takes a lip-smacking vengeful glee in shining a light on all the dark things that Dick Cheney did behind the scenes ... - As you watch “Vice,” it’s not that the film comes up with an answer that’s overly glib or unconvincing; it doesn’t come up with much of an answer at all. ... The audience, in trying to suss out his motivation, let alone (gulp!) his inner life, is forced to fall back on abstractions like “greed” and “power” and “a flagrant contempt for democracy,” the sort of labels that add up to a liberal-left indictment but do little to explain, on a level of personal psychology, the crucial issue of how American right-wing patriotism got hijacked into something so corrupt. - On Bale: Christian Bale nails the Dick Cheney persona — dry, pointed, deceptively dull, invisibly passive-aggressive, a blank with a hint of a growl — and does it with a playful bravura that could hardly be more perfect.
|
|
|
Post by RhodoraO on Jan 19, 2019 18:25:47 GMT
From David Edelstein's Vulture review: www.google.com/amp/s/www.vulture.com/amp/2018/11/vice-movie-tyler-perry-colin-powell-adam-mckay.htmlOn film /direction: Vice has a big structural problem, though. However fitfully inspired, the narrative doesn’t hold you, and by the time McKay arrives at the vice-presidency, the audience is a little tired. The movie settles into a series of journalistic flash cards ... Watching these blackout sketches one after another, I began to long for scenes with more dramatic heft, and for a protagonist with more wrinkles. On Bale: Bale’s rasp is raspier than his Batman’s, and he nails Cheney’s chilling half-smile, which curls so fluidly into a sneer that in the end there’s no difference. -
|
|