Reese Witherspoon in Election (Paramount Pictures), Paul Giamatti in Sideways (Searchlight Pictures), George Clooney in The Descendants (Searchlight Pictures), Matt Damon in Downsizing (Paramount Pictures)Graphic: The A.V. Club
It’s been six years since Alexander Payne released his last film, Downsizing, to mixed reviews. Now he’s back with The Holdovers, which is being hailed as a return to form by those who’ve caught it on the festival circuit. The film reunites Payne with Sideways star Paul Giamatti, who plays a curmudgeonly professor at a prestigious prep school forced to spend an eventful winter break with a troubled student (Dominic Sessa) and the school’s chef (Da’Vine Joy Randolph). The film arrives in theaters on October 27.
In the meantime, we decided to take this opportunity to look back on the writer-director’s work through the years. Although his filmography only consists of seven films (not including The Holdovers), his movies have earned a total of 19 Academy Award nominations, and racked up two wins, for the screenplays for Sideways and The Descendants. Here’s how Payne’s films stack up.
7. Citizen Ruth (1996)
Citizen Ruth Trailer
In the mid-1990s, a film like could be written off as a jaunty farce (witness the bouncy, lighthearted tone of the original trailer) about the silly extremists ineffectually battling over the issue of abortion. That doesn’t play so well in 2023, in the wake of a partisan Supreme Court dismantling Roe v. Wade and the winning side embarking on a vindictive victory lap across multiple states. The film’s refusal to take sides no longer feels as amusing, bold, or clever as it did when it first came out. Now, it feels more like a cop-out. Laura Dern’s performance as Ruth, a dim-witted drug addict who finds out she’s pregnant, is just this side of camp, which suits the tone just fine. She soon becomes a target of exploitation for both anti-abortion and pro-choice advocates, who are depicted as equally kooky and exaggerated for comic effect. Each side sees Ruth as a pawn to be exploited in the interest of their own causes. While Citizen Ruth hasn’t aged as well as Payne’s more restrained work, it might make you nostalgic for a time when the abortion debate was something audiences could laugh about. On a technical level, though, it remains an impressive debut for a filmmaker who would continue to walk the line between comical farce and topical drama throughout his career.
It sure as fuck is in the Descendants. That’s what the whole movie is about. “His missionary ancestors were financially and culturally progressive—one even married a Hawaiian princess, making Matt a royal descendant and one of the state’s largest landowners.” He’s supposed to be mixed race.
I didn’t read the book but since they said he came from missionaries I assumed the marriage was in the distant past and possibly politically motivated. Like we could be talking early to mid 1800s and he may just be 1/32 native.
Your guess at his percentage is not too far off: in the book, Clooney’s character’s grandfather was 1/2, which would make him 1/8th, and while it’s been a while since I’ve watched it the movie may have even added another generation to that. The response you’re getting is also incorrect from both the perspective of the movie (he makes a point early on about being massively ha’ole and the scuttling of the land deal is precisely because he understands the legacy of what he’s responsible for protecting) and the Hemmings book, which makes it far clearer:“Well,” I say. “My great-grandfather was Edward King. His parents were missionaries, but he went in a different direction. He became a banker and later the chief financial officer for King Kalākaua. He managed the estate of Princess Kekipi, the last direct descendant of King Kamehameha.”“Okay, then what happened…Kekipi was supposed to marry her brother, a weird Hawaiian royalty tradition. Yikes. Just when they were about to tie the knot, she had an affair with her estate planner, Edward, and they married soon after. Annexation happened soon after, too, so marrying a haole businessman was pretty ballsy. Anyway, they had a lot between the two of them, and when another princess died, she left three hundred thousand acres of Kauai land to Kekipi as well as her estate.“Kekipi died first. Edward got it all. Then Edward set up a trust in 1920, died, and we got it all.”Scottie comes back and opens to the first page of the album. She ripped out a few pages from three local history books before I caught her, and she’s glued these in, making the album smell like cedar trunks. There’s Edward, hollow-eyed and serious. He has on knee-high boots, and his top hat rests on a table behind him. There’s Kekipi, which means “rebel,” her brown and flat, chubby face. Her bushy brows. Whenever I see her picture I think we would have hit it off. I can’t help but smile at her.Definitely worth a read when you’ve got a chance.
A quibble … I’d switch the first two. Maybe because I read the book first, Sideways was a bit lacking. I also never understood the hype for Church’s performance. A bit too big perhaps. But I can see it being #1. I never read Election before seeing the movie and maybe that’s why it’s a better film to me.Also – MVP of The Descendants: Nick Krause as Sid.
Co-sign. Election is, to the author’s point, a movie that keeps you thinking on multiple layers after it’s over. I enjoyed Sideways but it didn’t stay with me the same way.My favorite part of Election is that after mulling it over in the voting booth, Chris Klein decides it’s unsporting to vote for himself. Meanwhile Witherspoon doesn’t hesitate for a red second, and that ends up being the deciding vote in the election. If Klein had voted for himself he’d have won. I thought that perfectly captured the difference between hell-bent political aspirants and normal people.
I love how Chris Klein played his character – sweet, dim, good-hearted and kind of doofy. His sincere delivery of “I love you, even though you’re adopted” to his sister always cracks me up.
That dimness in the scene where he’s introduced skiing kills me. After crashing and breaking his leg, he lays there shouting “WHYYYY????!!!” to the heavens, as if the broken leg was some random act of God and not an entirely foreseeable result of jumping off cornices and generally skiing like a maniac.
Did you read Vertical and Sideways 3: Chile?I dug Vertical. It delves in the Miles a lot more and I would have liked to see Giamatti doing it as he is basically Miles in my mindseye thanks to his performance in Sideways. Haven’t hit Chile though yet.
Was the writer alive in the 90’s? People didn’t start being worrying about Roe v. Wade being overturned in the 2020s, and Dobbs wasn’t the first post-Roe case to address the topic of abortion.
We were absolutely marching for abortion rights in the 90s and 2000s. I went to my first rally in ‘92. We knew it was always on the verge of being overturned and every election raised new fears about The Supreme Court.
What’s your point? The writer here’s point was that Citizen Ruth is received differently in 1995 than 2023, which is an objective fact. No one needed this predictable smug reply.
“Remember in the 90s, when the abortion rights fight was FUN?!”Truly insane that whoever wrote this (I’m not gonna check) had just… never heard of the anti-choice terrorism in the 90s.
Shoot, one of the Eric Rudolph’s stated reasons for his bombing spree was that he was violently against abortion. The AV club just called bombing the Olympics “silly extremists ineffectually battling over the issue of abortion.”
I dunno, I’d still take Citizen Ruth over Downsizing any day. Downsizing has been Payne’s only straight-up misfire, IMO. Otherwise I agree with the ranking of every other film. Sideways and Election are all-timers for me. Is that Tracy Flick sequel still happening?
Citizen Ruth is such a smart film. Only a vanity-free Laura Dern could have pulled off a performance like that.Election is one of the best films of the 90s, and I would have placed it at #1. Everything about it worked. I find Sideways unbearable on re-watches.
I saw Sideways when I was (arguably) too young and nothing about it resonated with me. I could not for the life of me understand all the hype. But now that I am in a different place in my life I am curious to re-visit it.
It’s probably not a selling point to say it’s Woody Allen in California wine country but crasser and probably not a flattering reflection of me when I try to convince you that’s a good thing. But it kind of is.
It’s nothing like Woody Allen. Its more like a grown up version of the 90s talky indy movies. Except, where in those movies, people have the confidence of youth and as they discuss their ideas about life, all these guys have left is bitterness about reality with just a little bit of a hope for a future that may be just a tiny bit better.
Talky movie targeting a bourgeoise demographic about a cerebral, deeply neurotic man working in the arts who wrestles with his own existential angst while navigating the ins and outs of platonic and romantic relationships, focusing on themes of personal growth and forgiveness of moral transgressions. I don’t dismiss your take or anything. But c’mon man, it’s a lot like Woody Allen.
I feel like the tone is completely different, Woody Allen is often so clearly the good guy and there’s a lot of wish fulfillment in his work. To the extent there is bitterness, it usually gets wiped away quickly.Woody Allen always worked because anyone that felt they were a even little bit cerebral could relate to and cheer on his successes.This movie is a curdled version of that. This is the, maybe you aren’t as smart, or as moral or as high minded, as you thought you were. Maybe you aren’t the center of anything. I think it’s in conversation with Woody Allen movies, but on the other end of the spectrum with the Noah Baumback type movie from the 90s between the bridge.
Woody Allen is a foundationally influential figure a lot of people are in the process of rejecting culturally, to the point many would like him effectively erased him from cultural memory (avoiding a certain “c” word here). For obvious good reason. But it’s tough to do when someone’s work is SO influential, directly or indirectly. For me he’s clearly seminal to what Sideways is (not the only influence, Baumbach being another, but Baumbach is himself influenced by Allen) and I think that’s still true even if the story inverts an Allen-esque dynamic or varies the moral perspective. The dude’s got his grubby little mitts on everything, whether we like it or not.
I’m not rejecting Allen, just saying that this movie scratches a different itch. After a Woody Allen movie, a certain kind of intellectual will pat himself on the back, because it elevates intellectualism and sort of bends the story to its will. Sideways, and payne more broadly, is doing the opposite. It puts down the intellectual who just knows things and asks him to live in the real world. People will call themselves a woody allen type, or did at one point, proudly. Noone is calling themselves a Miles with any sort of pride. If someone is looking Allen type stuff from this period, there are linklater and kaufman movies, which are a little less sour on the smart talky self-centered protagonist.
It’s got a nuance you will probably hook into as you watch it as you get older. I like Miles…he has the eternal ‘wingman’ quality that Paul does so well. A guy willing to go along with his friend Jack but is just not ‘that guy’ to his actions or decisions. He is willing to do it but Christ, ‘you are a fuckin idiot’ probably sits there on his tongue throughout.And the thing is, as I got older, I started recognizing how Miles let Jack do this shit to just allow him to live vicariously through it in some respects without the repercussions. However, this trip something different happens and Miles has to come out of this safe bubble. And honestly, you can’t help but root for him.It made me a real fan of Paul Giamatti (and American Splendor sealed it). And also the Pinot Noir of the Santa Ynez Valley (he wasn’t kidding – its good stuff even without chewing gum).
It is basically a stereotypical male writer’s fantasy. The most unappealing alcoholic character somehow ends up with Virginia Madsen and his womanizing vapid friend still gets his nice wedding at the end.If you watch it in a certain mood, you can find the humor in the scene where the gorgeous Madsen is actually hitting on Paul Giamatti because he’s talking about the “complexity” of Pinot Noir. It’s written as some deep analogy and it’s super funny on re-watches.
This was sort of what I remember – that the characters were not really great, but ended up in a better at the end for reasons that were not clear to me. That’s basically the plot of Entourage.
I always enjoy the scene where Jack has to crash the car to make it look like an injury he got was from a car accident. Car veers off through a field through a fence after they put a brick on the accelerator. Felt like an Always Sunny gag.
Love It’s Always Sunny. I could totally see Dennis thinking that is the only logical way to handle it that situation.Sideways has a few good scenes, (the ostrich farm bit cracked me up) but it didn’t translate into a great film for me in any way. I didn’t feel Miles and Jack’s friendship rang true despite the fact they were both kind of loathsome.Jack stealing money from his Mom…ick. There was nothing appealing about either of them.
The first time I watched it, I couldn’t stand Jack and didn’t get why they were even friends. But with repeat viewings, it finally dawned on me that these two men deeply need one another. Jack forces Miles out of his depression and self-pity, while Miles forces Jack back down to earth when he’s gone nuts. Still don’t particularly like Jack as a character, but their friendship is very touching.
Election is far and away my favorite Payne film and likely my favorite movie satire. In the hands of a lesser director and screenwirter it could have easily become a cartoonish exercise in mockery and cynicism with mere cutouts for characters and clumsy allusions to Bigger Ideas (e.g., base elements too often mistaken for good satire). But incredibly astute casting and Payne’s direction keep all the characters at least somewhat sympathetic and recognizable to the bitter end. It’s at its funniest for me precisely at the moments when the characters’ rationalizations border on the depraved and in direct proportion to the suffering they unleash on themselves and others – all entirely preventable with the application of even a shred of honest self-assessment and restraint (and of course uncomfortably recognizable).
Has there been a more colossally wasted premise than Downsizing?Needed way more humor, or maybe needed to be scarier, show how fragile and unsafe a tiny human would be, as it is, it’s painfully dull.
Totally agree. It was such an excellent concept that could have had so much to say about so many things. It should have had a point of view and a consistent tone and dared to be a satirical-horror movie, or something. I was so excited to see it and I left so disappointed.
“Citizen Ruth” is even more relevant these days. Pretending everyone who aligns with your political viewpoint isn’t a self-righteous a-hole is the problem.
Election is #1 for me. No movie before or since has ever so perfectly captured the suburban high school experience. Every detail is perfect. And I guess it has something to say about politics too.
Election is so fucking good. The kids seem like kids – in other words, like assholes.And it doesn’t cop out, it stays pissed off the whole way. One of the best movie endings ever. “Who the FUCK does she think she is?!”
The Descendants is a favorite of mine partially because it’s one of the tiny, tiny handful of movies that gets Hawaii right, and partially because Clooney sells the hell out of making the affair plausible (from the flip flop run to the “oh, we were just fighting” setting from the neighbors that eventually culminates in the brutal “you’re putting makeup on a corpse!” response) and Judy Greer does the same in a very small amount of time to make it tangible. Even Woodley gives a pretty decent performance, which must have taken some work. I might even rank it over Sideways, but I also think that nothing Payne has done is bad, which is something I wish I could say for other directors.
THANK YOU, that’s exactly how I felt about “Citizen Ruth” at the time it came out. Everyone was just going gaga over it, and I thought it was just easy jokes at easy targets. Yes, even then, I guess there were some of us who thought the whole “BOTH SIDES are silly!!” stance (which wasn’t confined to this movie, tbh – Jay Leno and “Forrest Gump”, anyone?), was a cop-out at best, dangerous at worst. As now we know.
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Election, About Schmidt, and Sideways were decent.The Descendants may be one of the most boring films I’ve ever seen.
George Clooney as a schlub who loses his wife to Matthew Lillard is some of the worst casting of all time.
I don’t know. George Clooney as a part Island native is even worse if you think about it.
That’s… not what he is.
It sure as fuck is in the Descendants. That’s what the whole movie is about. “His missionary ancestors were financially and culturally progressive—one even married a Hawaiian princess, making Matt a royal descendant and one of the state’s largest landowners.” He’s supposed to be mixed race.
I didn’t read the book but since they said he came from missionaries I assumed the marriage was in the distant past and possibly politically motivated. Like we could be talking early to mid 1800s and he may just be 1/32 native.
Your guess at his percentage is not too far off: in the book, Clooney’s character’s grandfather was 1/2, which would make him 1/8th, and while it’s been a while since I’ve watched it the movie may have even added another generation to that. The response you’re getting is also incorrect from both the perspective of the movie (he makes a point early on about being massively ha’ole and the scuttling of the land deal is precisely because he understands the legacy of what he’s responsible for protecting) and the Hemmings book, which makes it far clearer:“Well,” I say. “My great-grandfather was Edward King. His parents were missionaries, but he went in a different direction. He became a banker and later the chief financial officer for King Kalākaua. He managed the estate of Princess Kekipi, the last direct descendant of King Kamehameha.”“Okay, then what happened…Kekipi was supposed to marry her brother, a weird Hawaiian royalty tradition. Yikes. Just when they were about to tie the knot, she had an affair with her estate planner, Edward, and they married soon after. Annexation happened soon after, too, so marrying a haole businessman was pretty ballsy. Anyway, they had a lot between the two of them, and when another princess died, she left three hundred thousand acres of Kauai land to Kekipi as well as her estate.“Kekipi died first. Edward got it all. Then Edward set up a trust in 1920, died, and we got it all.”Scottie comes back and opens to the first page of the album. She ripped out a few pages from three local history books before I caught her, and she’s glued these in, making the album smell like cedar trunks. There’s Edward, hollow-eyed and serious. He has on knee-high boots, and his top hat rests on a table behind him. There’s Kekipi, which means “rebel,” her brown and flat, chubby face. Her bushy brows. Whenever I see her picture I think we would have hit it off. I can’t help but smile at her.Definitely worth a read when you’ve got a chance.
No notes!
Bravo on completely missing the quite basic point of Citizen Ruth.
Nebraska is far away my favorite of his films. I watch it at least once a year.
A quibble … I’d switch the first two. Maybe because I read the book first, Sideways was a bit lacking. I also never understood the hype for Church’s performance. A bit too big perhaps. But I can see it being #1. I never read Election before seeing the movie and maybe that’s why it’s a better film to me.Also – MVP of The Descendants: Nick Krause as Sid.
Co-sign. Election is, to the author’s point, a movie that keeps you thinking on multiple layers after it’s over. I enjoyed Sideways but it didn’t stay with me the same way.My favorite part of Election is that after mulling it over in the voting booth, Chris Klein decides it’s unsporting to vote for himself. Meanwhile Witherspoon doesn’t hesitate for a red second, and that ends up being the deciding vote in the election. If Klein had voted for himself he’d have won. I thought that perfectly captured the difference between hell-bent political aspirants and normal people.
I love how Chris Klein played his character – sweet, dim, good-hearted and kind of doofy. His sincere delivery of “I love you, even though you’re adopted” to his sister always cracks me up.
That dimness in the scene where he’s introduced skiing kills me. After crashing and breaking his leg, he lays there shouting “WHYYYY????!!!” to the heavens, as if the broken leg was some random act of God and not an entirely foreseeable result of jumping off cornices and generally skiing like a maniac.
I love it too though I think any “acting” is just Chris Klein being himself.
Did you read Vertical and Sideways 3: Chile?I dug Vertical. It delves in the Miles a lot more and I would have liked to see Giamatti doing it as he is basically Miles in my mindseye thanks to his performance in Sideways. Haven’t hit Chile though yet.
Sideways was one of the worst novels I’ve ever read. I hated it so much. I can’t imagine a better example of a film far surpassing the source book.
Nebraska & Sideways.
Was the writer alive in the 90’s? People didn’t start being worrying about Roe v. Wade being overturned in the 2020s, and Dobbs wasn’t the first post-Roe case to address the topic of abortion.
We were absolutely marching for abortion rights in the 90s and 2000s. I went to my first rally in ‘92. We knew it was always on the verge of being overturned and every election raised new fears about The Supreme Court.
Welcome to the modern AV Club
not to mention the clinic bombings and shoot-ups.
What’s your point? The writer here’s point was that Citizen Ruth is received differently in 1995 than 2023, which is an objective fact. No one needed this predictable smug reply.
Preach. Casey in 1992 set the countdown clock for us to lose our rights.
There have been attempts to kill it since it was ruled. Its like how attempts to subvert Obertfell V Hodges began basically after it was ruled.
“Remember in the 90s, when the abortion rights fight was FUN?!”Truly insane that whoever wrote this (I’m not gonna check) had just… never heard of the anti-choice terrorism in the 90s.
honestly shocked the writer didn’t also say Election aged poorly, but then again the blurb doesn’t sound like she actually watched it
Shoot, one of the Eric Rudolph’s stated reasons for his bombing spree was that he was violently against abortion. The AV club just called bombing the Olympics “silly extremists ineffectually battling over the issue of abortion.”
I dunno, I’d still take Citizen Ruth over Downsizing any day. Downsizing has been Payne’s only straight-up misfire, IMO. Otherwise I agree with the ranking of every other film. Sideways and Election are all-timers for me. Is that Tracy Flick sequel still happening?
Citizen Ruth is such a smart film. Only a vanity-free Laura Dern could have pulled off a performance like that.Election is one of the best films of the 90s, and I would have placed it at #1. Everything about it worked. I find Sideways unbearable on re-watches.
I saw Sideways when I was (arguably) too young and nothing about it resonated with me. I could not for the life of me understand all the hype. But now that I am in a different place in my life I am curious to re-visit it.
Just cover your ears any time the score plays and you should be fine.
It’s probably not a selling point to say it’s Woody Allen in California wine country but crasser and probably not a flattering reflection of me when I try to convince you that’s a good thing. But it kind of is.
It’s nothing like Woody Allen. Its more like a grown up version of the 90s talky indy movies. Except, where in those movies, people have the confidence of youth and as they discuss their ideas about life, all these guys have left is bitterness about reality with just a little bit of a hope for a future that may be just a tiny bit better.
Talky movie targeting a bourgeoise demographic about a cerebral, deeply neurotic man working in the arts who wrestles with his own existential angst while navigating the ins and outs of platonic and romantic relationships, focusing on themes of personal growth and forgiveness of moral transgressions. I don’t dismiss your take or anything. But c’mon man, it’s a lot like Woody Allen.
I feel like the tone is completely different, Woody Allen is often so clearly the good guy and there’s a lot of wish fulfillment in his work. To the extent there is bitterness, it usually gets wiped away quickly.Woody Allen always worked because anyone that felt they were a even little bit cerebral could relate to and cheer on his successes.This movie is a curdled version of that. This is the, maybe you aren’t as smart, or as moral or as high minded, as you thought you were. Maybe you aren’t the center of anything. I think it’s in conversation with Woody Allen movies, but on the other end of the spectrum with the Noah Baumback type movie from the 90s between the bridge.
Woody Allen is a foundationally influential figure a lot of people are in the process of rejecting culturally, to the point many would like him effectively erased him from cultural memory (avoiding a certain “c” word here). For obvious good reason. But it’s tough to do when someone’s work is SO influential, directly or indirectly. For me he’s clearly seminal to what Sideways is (not the only influence, Baumbach being another, but Baumbach is himself influenced by Allen) and I think that’s still true even if the story inverts an Allen-esque dynamic or varies the moral perspective. The dude’s got his grubby little mitts on everything, whether we like it or not.
I’m not rejecting Allen, just saying that this movie scratches a different itch. After a Woody Allen movie, a certain kind of intellectual will pat himself on the back, because it elevates intellectualism and sort of bends the story to its will. Sideways, and payne more broadly, is doing the opposite. It puts down the intellectual who just knows things and asks him to live in the real world. People will call themselves a woody allen type, or did at one point, proudly. Noone is calling themselves a Miles with any sort of pride. If someone is looking Allen type stuff from this period, there are linklater and kaufman movies, which are a little less sour on the smart talky self-centered protagonist.
It’s got a nuance you will probably hook into as you watch it as you get older. I like Miles…he has the eternal ‘wingman’ quality that Paul does so well. A guy willing to go along with his friend Jack but is just not ‘that guy’ to his actions or decisions. He is willing to do it but Christ, ‘you are a fuckin idiot’ probably sits there on his tongue throughout.And the thing is, as I got older, I started recognizing how Miles let Jack do this shit to just allow him to live vicariously through it in some respects without the repercussions. However, this trip something different happens and Miles has to come out of this safe bubble. And honestly, you can’t help but root for him.It made me a real fan of Paul Giamatti (and American Splendor sealed it). And also the Pinot Noir of the Santa Ynez Valley (he wasn’t kidding – its good stuff even without chewing gum).
It’s stuff like this that went way over my head in my youth that now I would be curious to see from a new perspective.
It is basically a stereotypical male writer’s fantasy. The most unappealing alcoholic character somehow ends up with Virginia Madsen and his womanizing vapid friend still gets his nice wedding at the end.If you watch it in a certain mood, you can find the humor in the scene where the gorgeous Madsen is actually hitting on Paul Giamatti because he’s talking about the “complexity” of Pinot Noir. It’s written as some deep analogy and it’s super funny on re-watches.
This was sort of what I remember – that the characters were not really great, but ended up in a better at the end for reasons that were not clear to me. That’s basically the plot of Entourage.
He’s not really talking about Pinot Noir though. He’s talking about himself.
I realize that. The analogy is not exactly subtle.
I always enjoy the scene where Jack has to crash the car to make it look like an injury he got was from a car accident. Car veers off through a field through a fence after they put a brick on the accelerator. Felt like an Always Sunny gag.
Love It’s Always Sunny. I could totally see Dennis thinking that is the only logical way to handle it that situation.Sideways has a few good scenes, (the ostrich farm bit cracked me up) but it didn’t translate into a great film for me in any way. I didn’t feel Miles and Jack’s friendship rang true despite the fact they were both kind of loathsome.Jack stealing money from his Mom…ick. There was nothing appealing about either of them.
The first time I watched it, I couldn’t stand Jack and didn’t get why they were even friends. But with repeat viewings, it finally dawned on me that these two men deeply need one another. Jack forces Miles out of his depression and self-pity, while Miles forces Jack back down to earth when he’s gone nuts. Still don’t particularly like Jack as a character, but their friendship is very touching.
Election is far and away my favorite Payne film and likely my favorite movie satire. In the hands of a lesser director and screenwirter it could have easily become a cartoonish exercise in mockery and cynicism with mere cutouts for characters and clumsy allusions to Bigger Ideas (e.g., base elements too often mistaken for good satire). But incredibly astute casting and Payne’s direction keep all the characters at least somewhat sympathetic and recognizable to the bitter end. It’s at its funniest for me precisely at the moments when the characters’ rationalizations border on the depraved and in direct proportion to the suffering they unleash on themselves and others – all entirely preventable with the application of even a shred of honest self-assessment and restraint (and of course uncomfortably recognizable).
Has there been a more colossally wasted premise than Downsizing?Needed way more humor, or maybe needed to be scarier, show how fragile and unsafe a tiny human would be, as it is, it’s painfully dull.
Totally agree. It was such an excellent concept that could have had so much to say about so many things. It should have had a point of view and a consistent tone and dared to be a satirical-horror movie, or something. I was so excited to see it and I left so disappointed.
Funnier, scarier, or even more dramatic, it needed… something
“Citizen Ruth” is even more relevant these days. Pretending everyone who aligns with your political viewpoint isn’t a self-righteous a-hole is the problem.
It also very much takes sides. It just depicts humanity and flaws on both sides, which is one of the reasons it’s so damn good.
Election is #1 for me. No movie before or since has ever so perfectly captured the suburban high school experience. Every detail is perfect. And I guess it has something to say about politics too.
I believe Rose McGowan #metoo
Election is his best film.
Election is so fucking good. The kids seem like kids – in other words, like assholes.And it doesn’t cop out, it stays pissed off the whole way. One of the best movie endings ever. “Who the FUCK does she think she is?!”
The Descendants is a favorite of mine partially because it’s one of the tiny, tiny handful of movies that gets Hawaii right, and partially because Clooney sells the hell out of making the affair plausible (from the flip flop run to the “oh, we were just fighting” setting from the neighbors that eventually culminates in the brutal “you’re putting makeup on a corpse!” response) and Judy Greer does the same in a very small amount of time to make it tangible. Even Woodley gives a pretty decent performance, which must have taken some work.
I might even rank it over Sideways, but I also think that nothing Payne has done is bad, which is something I wish I could say for other directors.
are we still getting the Election sequel, ‘Tracy Flick Can’t Win’?
Citizen Ruth is one of my all-time favorites and it feels actually more relevant and incisive each year.
THANK YOU, that’s exactly how I felt about “Citizen Ruth” at the time it came out. Everyone was just going gaga over it, and I thought it was just easy jokes at easy targets. Yes, even then, I guess there were some of us who thought the whole “BOTH SIDES are silly!!” stance (which wasn’t confined to this movie, tbh – Jay Leno and “Forrest Gump”, anyone?), was a cop-out at best, dangerous at worst. As now we know.