Vice

A band called The Brakes have a song called 'Cheney'. It is only ten seconds long and its entire lyric is 'One, two, three, four... Cheney, Cheney, Cheney, Cheney, Cheney, Cheney, Cheney. Stop being such a dick.' It's blunt but for a protest song it is a little light on detail.

Not so Adam McKay's Vice, which presents an entire charge sheet against the man. It will depend what your persuasion is politically whether you believe him or not. He also admits right at the start that he's up against a very secretive man who was also meticulous at covering his tracks.

This is McKay's follow up to the outstanding ‘The Big Short’ where he made mortgages almost enjoyable. The film is narrated by a fictional character called Kurt (Jesse Plemons), whose connection to Cheney isn’t revealed until much later in the film and makes for an interesting plot device.

Throughout the film, Cheney (Christian Bale) is painted as ruthless ambitious political animal, oil mogul and waterboarding fan. Alongside him is a cast of powerful political people. Such as Colin Powell (Tyler Perry), Scooter Libby (Justin Kirk), Condoleezza Rice (LisaGay Hamilton) and Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell). All are easily recognisable likenesses.

It is Rumsfeld who inaugurates Cheney into Washington in the first place and continues to pop up throughout the story. Then there’s Cheney’s wife Lynne (Amy Adams), who is almost as ruthless as Cheney himself.

The story gets even more interesting (and more controversial) when we get to George W. Bush’s (Sam Rockwell) presidency where Cheney reshaped the role of Vice President from merely a ceremonial one to one with real power. That is all the powers he wanted and Cheney seems to manipulate Bush at will. The Bush period is clearly the film’s main target and questions this administration on almost everything but most specifically on 9/11 and on Iraq.

Say what you like about his politics and his morals (or lack of them) but Cheney certainly knew how to take his opportunities. The only handbrake on Cheney’s ambition comes when he considers the effect his career would have on his daughter Mary (Alison Pill), a committed lesbian and very much pro same-sex marriage which certainly isn’t the Republican Party’s line. Yet he ditches even those considerations in the end.

In a speech towards the end of the film, Cheney says that the public got what they wanted because they elected him. This is a message backed up by the film makers in a scene after the end of the film, amongst the credits that the many who leave before these roll will have missed.

Going back to a Republican Party focus group that appeared earlier in the film, this group are now discussing the film itself and coming to blows about it. Apart from one young woman who, looking bored, turns to her friend and says she really wanted to watch the new ‘Fast and Furious’ movie. The message being that she’s not really interested in what matters. A message that could just as easily be applied in the UK at the moment.

A very decent film with Bale, if you can spot him under the make-up and padding, excellent.

Mary Queen Of Scots

Mary Stuart (Saoirse Ronan) became Queen of Scotland when just six days old following the death of her father James V Of Scotland. While Scotland was ruled by Regents until she became an adult, she was effectively married off at the age of five to the future King of France, who was himself only four. She subsequently moved to France for thirteen years. The last two as Queen in France to the then King Francis II, who then died on her.

So in 1561, at the age of eighteen, Mary moved back to Scotland to claim the throne in her own country. She was also next in line to the throne in England, unless her cousin Elizabeth I (Margot Robbie) produces or names an heir.

Her reappearance creates alarm on both sides of the border. As a devout Catholic, she was regarded with suspicion by her mainly Protestant subjects. Not even her half-brother James Murray (James McArdle), who is the stand-in monarch, trusts her. While Protestant cleric John Knox (David Tennant) can't even abide a woman being in charge.

Then there’s Elizabeth, ravaged by the pox, who is completely unhappy at having a younger, much better looking queen eyeing up her throne. Yet Elizabeth sees no other viable option and the two come to an agreement of sorts in a dramatic meeting between the two that apparently in real life never happened. Unfortunately hardly anyone else likes this idea and the plots against her mount.

Mary seems naive, she chooses her allies and her husbands badly. Her second husband, Lord Darnley (Jack Lowden) is a severe disappointment, who ends up murdered but with whom she had a son. Her third, the Earl of Bothwell (Martin Compston), is a ‘nice’ chap who is not only the suspected murderer but who abducts her and also rapes her as a sort of marriage proposal.

None of this goes down well with people and she is forced to abdicate the throne to her one year old son and go into hiding. This ends with her imprisoned for eighteen years before finally being beheaded on the orders of her cousin. 

In The Favourite, we saw two women vying for the affections of Queen Anne while here, we see two women vying against the men and for the throne of England. It’s interesting and complex stuff but in the end probably not that great a film.

Stan & Ollie

The film opens in 1937 but only to remind us, not that we really needed telling, that back in the day Laurel and Hardy were one of the biggest (if not the biggest) comedy stars in the world and absolutely everybody loved them.

All is not perfect though. Stan Laurel (Steve Coogan), the more savvy of the two, is not happy that they are paid less than other comedy stars such as Charlie Chaplin. He wants to break with their agent Hal Roach (Danny Huston) but the fact he and Oliver Hardy (John C Reilly) have separate contracts which expire at different times make this difficult as does Ollie’s reluctance to rock the boat. In the end they briefly go their separate ways. Ollie gets a new partner and even makes a movie without Stan.

Fast forward sixteen years to 1953 and the pair have been back together for some time but their time in the limelight has been and gone. As almost a last throw of the dice they come to Britain to do a tour and to try to revive their careers. If it all goes well they hope to be able to make another movie.

The film covers this tour as they play to half empty halls and stay in some seriously seedy accommodation. Their promoter Bernie Delfont (Rufus Jones) is no help, he has his mind now firmly on newcomers such as Norman Wisdom and Abbott and Costello.

To boost ticket sales they are asked to perform embarrassing publicity stunts such as judging a beauty contest etc. Meanwhile Stan has the fruitless task getting hold of the producer who is supposedly financing their new film but the film isn’t going to happen because as the tour has shown, sadly they are no longer the draw they once were.

Towards the end of the tour they are joined by their wives, Lucille Hardy (Shirley Henderson) and Ida Kitaeva Hardy (Nina Arianda). Who are a double-act in their own right.

The two are by now at their lowest ebb and when Ollie is taken ill he decides to pack it all in. Stan is then paired up with a new partner to complete the tour but he knows it’s not the same. The pair of them may have had their rocky moments but really they both know can’t perform without each other. Soon Ollie climbs off his sick bed against doctor’s order, and his wife’s, to complete the tour.

It’s a lovely film, a nice homage to Laurel and Hardy but a sad one too. Not at all what I was expecting and all the better for that. Both Reilly and Coogan play their parts brilliantly and capture the various mannerisms of the two characters. Highly recommended.

The Favourite

The Favourite is about Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) who rules Britain from 1702 to 1714. The film portrays her as bit of a sad person plagued by ill health, a recluse and a part-time lesbian. She’s possibly sad because of her 17 failed pregnancies for which she has to show only 17 rabbits representing each one that ended in either miscarriage, stillbirth or a very short life. This I suppose might be enough to make you seek solace in your own sex. 

Or possibly sad because of the political turmoil she has to precede over, not that she takes much interest in ruling the country and leaves most of the bickering\blackmailing\murdering etc to her Prime Minister Sidney Godolphin (James Smith) and the opposition leader Robert Harley (Nicholas Hoult).

She does opt to raise taxes to pay for the war with France on the advice of her ‘lady in waiting’ Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz), Duchess of Marlborough, the wife of the general who commands the army. Mostly because Sarah is not only in possession of the royal ear but also the royal bed.

However Sarah’s sexual obligations to Anne are curtailed when Sarah’s cousin, Abigail Hill (Emma Stone), arrives on the scene as a chambermaid intent on shagging her way up the social ladder. Abigail was once an aristocrat herself until her father allegedly gambled her (and lost) in a poker game. I hasten to add there is no historical record to support this nor for that matter Anne’s rabbits. Although with the whole film supposedly being a riotous comedy sticking to the facts is probably not strictly necessary.

It doesn’t take Abigail long at all to oust Sarah from her role in delivering special services to the Queen while at the same time, conveniently for him, Harley is trying to get Abigail to persuade the Queen to stop financing the war. He strikes a deal with Abigail by offering her marriage, which will restore her status, to his friend Masham (Joe Alwyn) who Harley refers to as ‘c*** struck’ with Abigail.

Abigail though is not so struck with Masham and she consummates their marriage by nonchalantly jerking off her new husband with a look of disgust on her face before wiping her hand on the bedclothes.

Quite where Anne’s husband, Prince George of Denmark, is throughout all this we’re not sure.

All in all it’s an excellent period romp and all great fun, although obviously not good clean fun. The film boasts three excellent female leads which may stop people pointing out there are not enough female lead roles but probably not. In what is looking to be a very thin year for films it will no doubt pick up an award or three as well as educating everyone with new and varied uses of the ‘c’ word.