Don't Look Up - 4 nominations

 

Best Motion Picture of the Year Adam McKay (producer) Kevin J. Messick (producer)

Best Achievement in Film Editing Hank Corwin

Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score) Nicholas Britell

Best Original Screenplay Adam McKay (screenplay & story by) David Sirota (story by)

It starts as a comedy and satire, to be sure.  Scientists are warning of a meteorite that is plummeting toward earth that is sure to be a planetary killer.  Politicians are doing what they do - weighing how to save the earth while simultaneously delivering for their donors who would like to figure out a way to make money from the meteor's resources, and then finally, how to get the masses on their side.  How to sew discord among the people who are told there probably isn't even a meteor and that it's the liberal agenda combined with the "lamestream media" trying to dupe you into believing them, distracting from the plain truth in front of them.  When the meteor is suddenly visible from space, they are told not to look up into the sky so that they can continue to believe the lie.

It's true, I was laughing for most of the movie until it just felt too real and I just got nauseous.  The parallels are hard, so hard to watch.  There is even a moment when scientists figure out a way to launch missiles which would blow up the meteor and saving the earth, and the rockets are turned around for a wealthy CEO (a Jeff Bezos type) who wants to see if there are ways to profit from exploring the meteor's resources.  I heard an interview with Oscar nominated Adam McKay, and it's clear that they started to work on this film as a metaphor for climate change, and then COVID came along as the life-imitating art-imitating life reality.

The cast is great, the writing is whip smart, and frankly, it's the great liberal "I told you so" screw you mental masturbation so very targeted at those who are anti-science, easily duped by trite phrases and rallies.  But the I told you so seems less satisfying in the face of earth's actual destruction.  All I could think about as the movie concluded was my wise friend Steve Serpas' brilliant saying, "Understanding is the boobie prize."  Sure, they were right all along.  Sure, the media carried the talking points and never did any real analysis.  Sure, people could have easily fixed it by caring more about each other than individual rights or than doing their "own research" with no expertise to evaluate that "research."  But does any of that matter when the entire planet is dead?

Want more movie talk? Subscribe to my podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts, and more.

Vice - 8 nominations

Best Picture - Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Adam McKay and Kevin Messick

Actor in a Leading Role, Christian Bale
Actor in a Supporting Role, Sam Rockwell
Actress in a Supporting Role, Amy Adams
Directing, Adam McKay
Film Editing, Hank Corwin
Makeup and Hairstyling, Greg Cannom, Kate Biscoe and Patricia DeHaney
Writing (Original Screenplay), Written by Adam McKay

"I can handle the more mundane... jobs. Overseeing bureaucracy... military... energy... and, uh... foreign policy."  (yeah, that's basically everything)

There is so much to know about how Dick Cheney rose to the Vice Presidency.  At the time, it seemed that he was the erstwhile President behind the scenes, while George W Bush was the front man.  How did this happen?  The answer according to this film is Ann Cheney, Dick's wife, of whom it has been said that no matter who she married, he would end up in a place of serious power.  Cheney's younger years captured by heavy drinking and hard work, he slowly rose to power when Ann put her foot down and demanded more of him.  He finds a mentor in Donald Rumsfeld, and together they work for every modern Republican President in one or another capacities, including Cheney serving as the youngest chief of staff of all time for President Ford at the age of 34.

What is so cool about this film is that it's extremely weird.  It's not just regular storytelling - there is fantasy and humor and some things I don't even know how to describe.  There is a scene where the Cheneys are suddenly saying lines from MacBeth, but as themselves.  There is a scene in the middle of the movie where there is pronounced a happily ever after when the Cheneys slide off into happy obscurity, never to have engaged in politics again (well before becoming VP, just a funny, random, non-sequitur).  Not to mention the incredible number of heart attacks and how Cheney just takes them in stride as he is having them.  (A dozen doughnuts per day will do that to you.)  And these bizarre moments peppered throughout make the movie interesting and so much more than just a biopic.

The acting in the film is just superb.  Somehow Christian Bale is able to completely remake himself into Cheney, even achieving that strange side of the mouth talking from the real person.  It is well known that he gained over 40 pounds for the role, and the makeup and hairstyling do transform him into the man.  But it is the acting that brings it all the way home for Bale to truly embody the former VP.  This performance could dwarf both Adams and Rockwell, but doesn't.  They both also transform themselves into credible facsimiles of the real people, and same goes for Steve Carrell as Donald Rumsfeld, who did not receive a nomination but easily could have.

This whole film was Adam McKay's baby (which is why he is nominated in three categories).  He did years of research, he conducted interviews with the people who knew the Cheneys and who surrounded them.  As always, my very sincere admonition not to assume that everything you see in a movie is historical fact.  A quick search on Amazon reveals a number of books about the Cheney Vice Presidency (and even then, everyone has a point of view), but my sense is that the broad strokes of this film get it right.  

Cheney is possibly one of the most reviled figures in American politics (his approval rating when leaving office was 13%).  This film does nothing to assuage that impression.  I was angry during this movie, and so were the people I watched it with, Republicans and Democrats alike.  So perhaps that is the greatest value of Vice - it unites both sides of the aisle with a certain amount of shared disgust.  Isn't that a beautiful thing?