As Weiner limps towards another embarrassing Election Day, his life crumbles around him, and the only creature that comes out even slightly intact is one of his pissed-off cats, who appears during a fraught meeting scene to essentially stink-eye the fallen politician. In a different universe, the film could have been a gritty look at a man determined to work his way back to the top in this one, it’s a film that chronicles yet another very public downfall for a guy who never learned that the personal is political, and always has been. Kriegman and Steinberg’s film picks up in the midst of Weiner’s 2013 campaign for New York City mayor (he had previously run in 2003, long before his name was tainted by any whiff of scandal), with the former congressman eager to not only jump back into the political world, but to remind people of all the good he was capable of doing in the process. It’s hard to imagine how Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg’s “Weiner” even exists - though not the why, because who doesn’t love a no-holds-barred inside look at the downfall of a failed American politician? - as the documentary (and bonafide Sundance sensation) closely chronicles the (second) implosion of ruined political animal Anthony Weiner from inside the closed ranks of his own home and campaign. The future, “Shampoo” reminds us, belongs to those who want it most. Although a large chunk of the film takes place at a party in Nixon’s honor, you get the sense that George is one of those people who didn’t vote he goes where the wind blows him, and still has the nerve to get angry about where he ends up. A beautiful mutterer with a remarkable mane, George has sex with virtually every woman he meets (his conquests include Goldie Hawn, Julie Christie, Lee Grant, and possibly even a young Carrie Fisher, and that’s just over a 24-hour period!), but this Vietnam War-era Casanova can’t bring himself to really be with any one of them he’s so afraid of commitment that he condemns himself to a lifetime of loneliness. Pulling triple duty as the star, co-writer, and producer of Hal Ashby’s sad and frothy sex comedy, Beatty argued that Nixon’s victory was “when the American people came face to face with who they really were.” It’s certainly a fitting backdrop for his character, an oversexed Los Angeles hairdresser who needs to work on his roots. The story goes that it was Warren Beatty’s idea to set “Shampoo” on the eve of the 1968 election. “The Manchurian Candidate” is invoked a lot these days to refer to a foreign power’s influence over a presidential candidate – but its most powerful insight may be in its depiction of the gaslighting Lansbury’s character engages in: the idea that she projects onto her opponents everything vile that she does herself. “Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.” Why is it that all the ex-GIs who served with Shaw, a Korean War hero, finds it necessary to say that about him? And that they go into a trance-like state when they do? This tale of brainwashing and gaslighting centers on the political ambitions of Shaw’s parents: his father, a Senator in the mold of Joe McCarthy who peddles fierce anti-communist sentiment in a bid to be the running-mate to his party’s next presidential nominee, and his wife (Angela Lansbury), an actual communist agent who uses her husband’s bluster as the perfect shield.
“All the President’s Men” is the standard to which all subsequent depictions of investigative newspapers journalism aspire to, from “Spotlight” to “The Post.” -Christian Blauvelt
But it’s to Pakula’s credit that they all feel a natural part of telling the story of the 20th Century’s biggest American political scandal – there’s no unnecessary adornment to his craft, as if Pakula himself, like the best of journalists, believed that clarity and precision are the highest virtues. Pakula’s adaptation of Bernstein and Woodward’s book about the events that led to the end of the Nixon presidency. There are so many images and sounds that stick with you from Alan J. The soft glow of Deep Throat’s cigarette in a shadowy garage Ben Bradlee’s (Jason Robards) “Okay we go with it” order to Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) as his elevator doors lightly close in front of him the rat-tat-tat patter of a typewriter announcing the President’s resignation.
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