Review of Vice

Vice walks a tricky tightrope between silly and serious

You remember how when 28 Days Later came out, and you just figured it was a sequel to 28 Days, only it wasn’t? Well, this is like the opposite of that to The Big Short.

Before you think about that too much, here’s the meat and potatoes of this review. If you liked The Big Short, you’ll like Vice. If you didn’t, you won’t. If you haven’t seen The Big Short yet, you may continue reading further.

This is another movie by Adam McKay starring Christian Bale and Steve Carrell that exposes a deep secret the average American would just rather ignore. Yeah, sounds familiar. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. I loved The Big Short. The laissez faire narration technique in both movies pulled me into the inner circle. In Vice, it was like Jesse Plemons was letting me in on a secret. And then Adam McKay kind of did. But not in the usual biopic type of way. Vice has a certain tone about it that you don’t get anywhere else. Unless you’ve seen The Big Short.

It played with the fourth wall. It shot an entire scene in iambic pentameter. It gave you an alternate ending in the middle of the movie with credits and everything. It walked a very tricky tightrope between silly and serious without ever losing its footing. And in the end, it had a point. Yes, it is pretty easy to regurgitate the greatest hits of Dick Cheney’s well-known career. But this gave us the character. It helped us understand him on some level, and that is a serious tribute to Christian Bale. Bravo, Batman.

Adam McKay has made a name for himself, at least with me, of being able to explain things I otherwise wouldn’t understand. First the housing crisis, and now politics. I’m looking forward to his next movie, hopefully something about why all children feel the need to stop walking every time they enter a doorway.

7 bugs/10

Dustin Fisher

Review of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society turns an average book into an average movie

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Director: Mike Newell

Platform: Netflix

I have this horrible habit of wanting to watch the movies of the books I read to compare them. I gave this book three out of five stars and wanted to see how the movie measured up.

Well, you'll all be happy to know, the movie is not better. It's not worse, for what it's worth. But I can see why I hadn't even heard of it before seeking it out.

It's a post-war romantic drama that loosely centers around the German occupation of Guernsey. If you've never heard of Guernsey, you're not alone. It's one of the islands in the English Channel between Britain and France. Many of the Channel Islands were occupied during the war, the Germans used them as staging areas for the Battle of London. There, now I've given you more information than the movie chose to give you. You're already ahead.

The main plot of the movie happens in 1946, directly after the war, which makes the stakes of this story feel obnoxiously low for a something that bills itself as a war movie.

Despite all that though, this movie is crazy endearing. It has a charm and a heart that I wasn't expecting.

A lot of the action happens through flashbacks as we see the trauma and life of the Guernsey residents during the occupation. Like in a lot of occupation stories, we see that life miraculously continued. Even through strife and terror, the people managed to fall in love, buy bread, talk to each other, and read books.

Outside of all this, it is a romance story. It has a guy and a girl. A chance meeting. It has several tiny reasons that they should be apart, but no huge ones. She leaves. He stays. They meet back up at the airport – uh, boat dock.

If romance floats your boat, this is as good a story as any. If you like war stories, this one is okay. If you like 1940s fashion, this movie is phenomenal.

I'm one of those people who hates when romance cheapens a deep and meaningful story, so I'm acknowledging my bias here. I give the movie the same star-rating as the book, 3/5.

(For anyone wondering, I actually liked the book. But the ending was absolute trash. The final two chapters were a completely different format from the rest and changed some key characters' personalities. It totally took me out of it. I recommend the book other than that.)

6/10

Annie Stevenson