If the wall-to-wall political coverage isn’t prompting you to pour cayenne pepper in your eyes while chewing on a ball of tinfoil and you’re up for a topical “escape,” here are our top political movie picks to suit your careening mood swings.
Comedy/Satire
So The Colbert Report is your nightly news source and Keith Olbermann can occasionally make you laugh through your tears? Dow Jones sinking like the Titanic and taking that 401K down with it? Cue up one of these comedic chestnuts for a respite—you’ll feel better for a few hours.
Primary Colors
Just because John Travolta stars as a fairly obvious Clinton clone, don’t think the DVD is the cocktail coaster you’d expect. Barbarino brings his A-game as does an excellent supporting cast featuring Emma Thompson, Billy Bob Thornton, Kathy Bates, James Earl Jones, and Larry Hagman among others, but that’s expected when Mike Nichols directs. Based on the novel of the same name penned by Anonymous (who later turned out to be Newsweek political scribe Joe Klein), the film tells the story of a Southern governor whose unsavory appetites threaten to upend his ambitions of winning the presidential election. At the time of its release in 1998, President Clinton was dealing with the fallout from his own appetites for destruction, so the film largely was dismissed along obvious partisan lines.
But those who avoided the movie, for whatever reasons (political or John Travolta-averse), missed out on one of the best American political films in recent memory. Much more than a thinly veiled Clinton metaphor, it’s a story of modern American politics in the twentieth century that remains as pertinent today as it did when there was talk of a 15,000-point Dow Jones Industrial average.
Wag the Dog
When the President of the United States is accused of sexual misconduct in the Oval Office two weeks before the upcoming election, Washington spin-doctor, Conrad Brean (Robert DeNiro), is summoned to the White House and charged with distracting an unsuspecting public from the scandal. For Brean, the plan is simple. Bring in Hollywood producer, Stanley Motts (Dustin Hoffman), and manufacture a war in some ridiculously far off place like Albania to shift public focus away from the scandal and on the imperative and increasingly patriotic war effort.
A superlative David Mamet script, flawless direction by Barry Levinson and standout performances by DeNiro, and (believe it or not) Anne Heche, Hoffman’s pitch-perfect riff on Robert Evans (Hoffman’s best since Tootsie), the always great Denis Leary and consummate pro, William H. Macy all combine to make Wag the Dog one of the best political satires ever made. The Willie Nelson and Woody Harrelson cameos add over-the-top comic relief that must be seen to be believed.
An American President
If you are a West Wing fan and somehow missed this movie, let your fingers do the walking and queue it up already. Director Rob Reiner scores a nearly impossible hat trick, as Roger Ebert mentions in his review, “It’s hard to make a good love story, harder to make a good comedy, and harder still to make an intelligent film about politics.” Michael Douglas stars as widowed President, Andrew Shepard, who falls head over heels for the wrong person—a Washington lobbyist—at the wrong time at the start of his re-election campaign. Benning gives her character the perfect mix of vulnerable and tough Washington operative. Dreyfus delivers a frighteningly realistic portrayal of the Republican candidate running against Shepard. In typical Sorkin fashion, the dialogue is intelligent, believable, and inspirational. And while we’re pretty sure Sorkin isn’t ghost writing Obama’s speeches, the similarities have been duly noted.
The Real Deal
If you’re “Mad as hell!” like Peter Finch in Network, then these flicks are for you. But keep the sipping bourbon nearby.
All the President’s Men
I’d wager a thousand bucks (or one crisp T-bill) that if there’s anyone left on this planet that hasn’t yet seen this film, they reside in Wasilla, Alaska, where the lone Beta copy was burned in a mass movie melting. One of the finest examples of classic 70s cinema, undoubtedly the best expose on the Watergate scandal and perhaps one of the greatest films ever made—young lion Redford throwing nothing but aces and Hoffman firing when he still dug deep and gave everything. A supporting cast of cinema veterans including Jack Warden, Hal Holbrook, Jane Alexander, Jason Robards, and Ned Beatty round out the cast and help director, Alan J. Pakula, delivers a film as riveting today as the day it was released. The film hauled home eight Academy Awards—and that was before they started handing out nominations to drivel like Scent of a Woman and Titanic.
