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.

Battle Of The Sexes

The Battle of the Sexes is primarily about the exhibition tennis match in 1973 between possibly the best female tennis player at that time Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) and three time Wimbledon men’s champion 55-year-old Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell).

However the film is much more than that, focusing on the off court drama as well. It tries to cover the formation of WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) and King also falling in love with another woman at the same time. In a way it’s a mini biography of her life but it has to shuffle the timeline and some facts to do so. 

King was indeed instrumental in the formation of the WTA after she became annoyed that the male players were receiving cash prizes up to eight times that of the women, despite the fact they attracted just as many spectators. So in 1970, King and seven other women started to set up their own breakaway tournaments which led eventually to the formation of the WTA in 1973. The WTA went on to be hugely successful and is still going strong today.

 

1973 was also the year that Riggs, a self-proclaimed male chauvinist pig who was clearly missing the limelight, challenged the then world number one Margaret Court to a match. In his eyes this would prove that men are better than women at tennis and well better, full stop. He easily beat a poorly prepared Court on what became known as the Mother’s Day Massacre.

When he subsequently challenged King she also accepted, despite previously saying that she wouldn’t but now feeling that she needed to fly the flag for womankind to make up for Court's failings. Riggs wasted no time in ramping up the acrimony by going on TV to proclaim that women only belong in the kitchen and the bedroom.

King seems to take the latter bit of advice on board, although not in a way that Riggs would have appreciated, when she takes her hairdresser Marilyn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough) back to her hotel room. It is also not greatly appreciated by King’s husband Larry (Austin Stowell). 

In reality Barnett was actually King’s secretary and the affair had already been going for two years but the film alters this point despite the reality being possibly even more fascinating. Along with the fact it was Barnett who outed her secret superstar girlfriend eight years later. 

Their relationship, as well as disrupting her marriage, doesn’t do a lot for her concentration on the tennis court but she bounces back to beat Riggs in rather exaggerated movie style in their game at the Houston Astrodome.

Despite my initial reservations the film is surprisingly entertaining, smart and well-acted. It also has the potential to educate, inspire and make you 'google', in a time when not enough films attempt to do so. 

Stone is once again excellent, among other things making her relationship with Riseborough very believable. If anything the film attempts to cover too much and spreads itself a bit thin to do so. It does actually make me want to see a full biopic of BJK.

The Big Short

The Big Short is based on real people and true events surrounding the financial crisis of 2007/8. It is based on the book by financial journalist Michael Lewis.

It is about collateralised debt obligations, sub-prime mortgages, credit default swaps, bundling... Warning some of the financial jargon may go well over your head.

Not to worry, the producers have assumed that the audience will be blissfully ignorant of such matters and have enlisted the likes of Margot Robbie (in the bath) and a celebrity chef to help explain things in some of the frequent off the wall moments in the film. 

The film itself focuses on four fringe Wall Street players starting with the eccentric financial analyst Michael Burry (Christian Bale). Burry saw what nobody else wanted to see, that the housing market was based on an increasing number of dodgy loans to people who should never have been considered in the first place. He saw it as inevitable that the market was going to collapse but of course no one believed him.

Burry had complete autonomy of the investment fund he controlled and so he created a commodity for his clients betting against these mortgages. When he went to the banks to explain what he wanted to do they simply laughed at him and willingly sold him all the ‘insurance’ he wanted. 

Word of Burry's madness quickly spread and trader Jarred Bennett (Ryan Gosling) gets in on the act. He sells the idea to a group led by a cynical and depressed banker called Mark Baum (Steve Carell). Baum is the boss of a fund under the umbrella of Morgan Stanley, now he is betting against the hand that feeds him.

Finally, there's Charlie Geller (John Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock), a couple of rookies trying to break into the finance industry. They team up with disaffected former banker Brad Rickert (Brad Pitt) to bet against the investments. 

What they all ultimately find is that the investment houses ignore the coming crisis and in fact attempt to hide it because they were all making too much money to want it to stop. The film goes on to suggest that the corruption didn’t stop there and extended to the agencies who oversee the markets and possibly beyond.

The film succeeds in making a story about the financial crisis entertaining and that’s no mean feat. Although it could be viewed as a partner piece to 2011's Margin Call which achieved the same feat and is also well worth seeing.

The Big Short is a smart, clever film with some great acting performances. It could even be the best of this year and is well worthy of its Oscar nominations.