David Edelstein on Vice, Mary Poppins Returns, and On the Basis of Sex … Sara Holdren on To Kill a Mockingbird.
MOVIES / DAVID EDELSTEIN
Cheney Unchained Vice paints an ugly picture of American history’s most powerful VP.
WITH VICE, THE WRITER-DIRECTOR Adam McKay has devised a rollicking comic style for what amounts to an anti-hagiography, a scabrous portrait of Dick Cheney the Unholy One, cursed be He. The film tracks Cheney (Christian Bale under heavy but seamless makeup) from a young Wyoming screw up scolded after a second drunk driving arrest by his brittle, ambitious wife, Lynne (Amy Adams), to a scarily proficient legislative powermonger, to a global terrorist post-9/11, bombing and torturing willy-nilly. The movie’s fulcrum—which is also its prologue—is that day when TVmonitors teemed with images of burning towers as Vice-President Cheney coolly wrested power from the stumble bum president, George W. Bush—airborne, out of the loop—to the unease of Cabinet officials. “He [wields that power] like a ghost,” read the opening titles, “with most people having no idea who he is or where he came from.” Acknowledging the intense secrecy that continues to surround Cheney, those titles close with the assurance that the filmmakers have done their “fucking best.”
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A Wonk in Full- Ezra Klein, glowed-up and post-coup, was almost a celebrity at the convention.
Ezra Klein, glowed-up and post-coup, was almost a celebrity at the convention. Ezra Klein, who is known to keep his passions in check, did not have the right credentials to get into the arena. The Secret Service didn't recognize the New York Times' star "Opinion" writer and podcaster, but eventually he was able to figure out how to get in to where he belonged. This was, after all, as much his convention as any journalist's, since its high-energy optimism turned on the fact that President Joe Biden was no longer leading the ticket and, starting early this year, Klein had led the coup drumbeat.
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