Vice (2018)

My mother asked why someone would make a movie about a vice president.  That’s how seriously the job is taken.  I was trying to find a joke to lead off this review, but I think that’s the best lead I can find.

Then again, this is Richard Bruce Cheney we’re talking about.

He’s been called a lot of things.  I don’t imagine most of them were nice.

The movie’s timeline starts with him being pulled over for driving under the influence of alcohol.  That and a fight land him in jail, meaning that his wife, Lynne, has to bail him out.  She puts it to him to clean up his act.  He promises to do so, and does he.  This doesn’t get him back into Yale, but he does go into politics.

This leads to another turning point.  As an intern, he’s given the choice to work for a Democrat or a Republican.  After seeing Donald Rumsfeld speak, Cheney knows who he wants to intern with.   The two work well together, leading to more turning points and decisions.

The movie is said to be based on the true story, but I think the actual narrative falls somewhere between satire and sarcasm.  I got the impression that certain parts weren’t literally true.  (Take, for example, a claim that Cheney won the Iron Man competition.)  When his name is floated as a possible contender for president, he turns it down.  Part of it is that he doesn‘t want to expose his daughter to media attention because she‘s a lesbian.  It also doesn’t help that his odds of being elected put him two spots below Dan Quayle.

You do get the sense that Cheney is not a nice person.  The line goes that power corrupts, but Cheney may have been corrupt already.  He was just looking for the next opportunity.  When presented with the possibility of being vice president, Lynne won’t hear of it.  It’s a nothing job.

Sure, it might serve as a springboard to the presidency.  (From the 1980 election until 2008, either the sitting President or Vice President sought the office of President.)  Still, Vice President?  Instead of turning it down, Cheney looks into how he can make the job to his own liking.  It’s like Anakin Skywalker being trained in The Force.  It’s just a matter of time before he becomes Darth Vader.

I will say that the casting is spot on.  To see Cheney, you don’t even realize that it’s Christian Bale.  When you see George W. Bush, you’re not thinking of Sam Rockwell.  Sure, Steve Carell is a little obvious as Rumsfeld, but that’s actually forgivable.  (Having seen pictures of Runsfeld, I would say that Carell is a pretty awesome choice.)  Even having Jesse Plemons narrate the story was the way to go.

So many things come down to random events.  Imagine if Cheney hadn’t flunked out of Yale.  Suppose he hadn’t married Lynne.  What if Rumsfeld hadn’t spoken to the interns that day?  It would make for an interesting alternate-history story.

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Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

There are certain aspects of a movie that may seem cliché, but often prove necessary.  For instance, you should probably have a protagonist and an antagonist, each clearly defined.  At least one of the characters should learn something.  There should also be three acts; basically, there should be a setup, a story, and a resolution.  Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri doesn’t seem to follow these rules.

We have a protagonist in Mildred, who rents the titular billboards near her home.  Mildred’s daughter, Anne, was raped and murdered and the case is still unsolved.  Mildred uses the billboards to call out the town’s police chief, Willoughby.  Willoughby visits Mildred and reminds her that the case is cold.  None of the DNA matched anything from any other case.  There were no witnesses.  Without a random confession, the case is stalled.

That’s not enough for Mildred, who wants justice, or at least answers.  She’s committed to keeping the billboards up for a full year, despite not knowing where she’s going to get the money.  (She has enough for the deposit, but it takes an anonymous donation to keep it going for the first month.)  As you might expect, the town turns against her.  She can’t even trust her dentist.

You might ask where this is going.  I’ve seen the entire movie and I’m still asking that question.  Without giving out details, the movie meanders.  There are all sorts of major twists and turns, each taking the movie in a new direction.  We quickly learn that there are no sympathetic characters.  Given enough time, almost everyone seems to prove unlikable.  (There are maybe two exceptions to this observation, and one had very little screen time.)

Part of this is that the characters don’t seem to learn anything.  Mildred has had seven months to process her daughter’s death.  Taking out the billboards seems like the kind of impulsive thing someone might do the first month.  We even have Officer Dixon, who gets fired and is still the same racist person back when he had a job.  There’s no enlightenment.  There’s no new information or big revelation.  The movie ends with nearly every character basically the same person they were when the movie started.

This is one of those movies that I had seen because I have Moviepass.  Had I not seen it, I don’t think I would have seen it.  I’m not even sure I could recommend going if someone else paid for it.  It’s going to take me a while to process it and it might make sense if someone explains it to me.  Absent that, it would take repeated viewings and that’s not going to happen.  It has a rating of 8.5 on IMDb right now, so someone liked the movie.  I’m just not sure I can understand the movie.

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Moon (2009)

Colonizing the moon or another planet won’t be easy.  Any building will probably be designed for function rather than comfort.  You won’t be able to go outside due to lack of atmosphere.  If you’re among the first group to go, there won’t be many others going with you, so you’ll have a limited number of other people to interact with, if you have anyone else at all.

You don’t have to tell Sam Bell that, though.  He’s finishing up a three-year contract on the moon.  Two more weeks of monitoring a mining operation and he gets to go home.  His only companion is an artificial intelligence named GERTY.  Life is pretty boring for Sam.  The only ting of interest, in fact, is when something goes wrong.  For instance, he can’t communicate directly with Earth in anything resembling real time.  (This is due to an equipment failure.)

Things tend to get complicated when Sam notices people on the station.  Is he dreaming?  Are they hallucinations?  Either way, he gets distracted.  He wakes up with GERTY tending to him.  GERTY seems to be communicating with Earth, which should be impossible.  Answers are hard to come by as GERTY won’t let Sam out of the confines of the base.  It’s not clear why until Sam finds a reason to leave the base.

There’s that saying that you’re not paranoid if they’re really out to get you.  It’s bad enough that Sam has to spend three years without human company.  That’s enough to make anyone a little unbalanced.  However, as time goes by, he has more reason to believe that it’s not paranoia.

Take the fact that Sam’s job is to spend his entire three years alone.  You’d think that they’d send up a few other people just in case the AI isn’t enough.  It could be that Sam works for a really cheap company.  It could also be that people willing to work on the lunar surface are hard to come by, no matter how much you paid them.  It’s also possible that something more nefarious is going on.  (At the very least, is it morally right to isolate someone for that long, even if they agree to it?)

There is a certain efficiency to the movie.  You have two main characters, Sam and GERTY, who make the bulk of the story.  There’s even a minimal number of secondary characters.  The only other movie that comes to mind as being similar is Timecrimes.  It’s possible to tell a story well with very few characters and sets.  In fact, I could say that Moon used too many sets.  Having more of the movie take place in the lunar base could have added to the sense of claustrophobia that Sam would have felt.

Most of my issues are technical, though, and are to be expected.  The first one that I noticed was in saying dark side of the moon.  The moon has phases from our perspective, meaning that the dark side rotates.  I know I’m not the first to point out that it should properly be referred to as the far side of the moon, as the moon is tidally locked.  The other issue is lunar gravity.  I could see the structures having artificial gravity, but it seemed like Sam experienced normal gravity outside the base.  I’ll admit that both of these are relatively minor points.

The movie is 97 minutes, which seems about the right time.  It doesn’t feel rushed at all, nor does it seem like there’s a lot of filler.  There are a few cases where I was able to see things coming.  If you watch movies and television enough, you’ll be able to catch some of the foreshadowing.  I didn’t see many of the big plot twists coming, though.  How much you enjoy the movie will probably depend on how much you can let stuff like that go.  If you know someone who likes to ask questions during the movie, don’t watch this one with them.

IMDb page