Not everyone was willing to buy what Megyn Kelly was selling when she reinvented herself as a crusader for women in August 2015. Kelly, who had just referred to a New York affirmative consent law as “eliminat[ing] the rights of men” one month earlier, suddenly cared about the objectification of women when it directly impacted her life. It was a bit like a politician who changes their mind about gay marriage after one of their kids comes out of the closet. And Kelly continued to talk out of both sides of her mouth in her 2016 memoir, Settle For More, in which she wrote: “My problem with the word feminist is that it’s exclusionary and alienating.” In that same book, she detailed her experiences with serial harasser and by-then-former Fox News head Roger Ailes, preaching about the importance of women supporting women while telling readers that “anyone being harassed needs to remember that ‘no’ is an available answer.”
There’s potential for a complex character study in the mass of contradictions that is Megyn Kelly and her fellow Fox News defectors, untying the messy tangle of factors that might lead an otherwise complicit collaborator to resist. But that potential is wasted in the Fox News drama Bombshell, which chooses to follow the much simpler (and more flattering) route of taking Kelly, played here by Charlize Theron, and her former colleague Gretchen Carlson, played by Nicole Kidman, at face value. As such, the film is a snappy, glib tour of recent history in the Adam McKay mold, hydroplaning through the stormy real-life events that led to Ailes’ departure from Fox News with windshield wipers on high and blinders strapped to each side of its head.
This film treats gender, as filtered through the single issue of workplace sexual harassment, as a standalone factor that affects all women equally. The fact that the women painted as agitators and whistleblowers in the film made their names on race-baiting and victim-blaming is acknowledged almost begrudgingly, via a jokey recurring bit about Kelly’s infamous “Santa is white” comment on Fox News. Carlson, meanwhile, isn’t asked to submit to even that mild level of criticism; up until her ouster from the network midway through, the news stories she’s shown reporting on in the film are all at least moderately empowering, and therefore unquestioned.
This kid-gloves approach to Bombshell’s real-life characters does a disservice to its core trio, who give performances that are deeply immersive physically but limited by the script. Theron in particular completely disappears into the character of Megyn Kelly, nailing all of her mannerisms and her famously husky voice. Kidman is still noticeably Kidman, and is pushed to the margin of the story by its climax besides. But her ability to bring a steel backbone to brittle, chilly characters remains unmatched—even if here that strength is applied to a scene where a woman is rude to Gretchen Carlson at a supermarket. At Bombshell’s Fox News, female employees are neatly divided into harassment victims like Carlson and Kelly and defenders of the sexist status quo like Ailes’ wife Beth (Connie Britton) and TV personality Jeanine Pirro (Alanna Ubach). What little gray area there is between is personified by a fictional character, The O’Reilly Factor producer Jess (Kate McKinnon), a lesbian and a Democrat who is deeply closeted about both.
In its reluctance to grapple with the complexities of the people who have devoted their lives to furthering the Fox News agenda, the film ends up piling most of its emotional heavy lifting on the naive shoulders of Kayla Pospisil, the naïve evangelical go-getter played by Margot Robbie. Kayla is another new character invented for the film, and also the one who endures its most humiliating and explicit abuses at the hands of the villainous Ailes, played here in an appropriately repulsive turn from John Lithgow. The scene where Kayla tearfully unburdens herself to Jess after Ailes assaults her packs an emotional punch that’s almost too heavy for this otherwise superficial film, as does a viscerally upsetting, nauseatingly tense scene where Ailes forces Kayla to pull up her dress in front of him in order to “audition” for an on-camera gig.
Beyond the straightforward impact of Robbie’s storyline, one difficult-to-articulate idea that Bombshell does dramatize very well is the invisible web of excuses and insinuations that keep victims of harassment from coming forward. This is spun into unsettling edutainment in scenes like the one where a female journalist’s internal monologue is heard in voiceover as she’s offered an insulting sexual quid pro quo by a male superior on a business trip. More subtle, but equally effective, is the visual shift from form-fitting sheath dresses to blouses and slacks on the film’s female cast once Ailes has been dethroned. These scenes are played with the same pithy charm with which Robbie lays out the different floors of the Fox News building in the film’s opening sequence, comedic world-building that also lends Bombshell its best joke: a character’s insistence that “sushi is not a liberal food.”
With its confident approach to surface-level material, Bombshell puts Roach into a group of filmmakers that also includes Vice’s Adam McKay and Joker’s Todd Phillips: directors who have interpreted their box-office success doing broad comedies as a mandate to appoint themselves serious artists commenting on the issues that really matter. (Roach made a name for himself as the director of 1997's Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery, and comes to Bombshell on the heels of the mediocre Trumbo.) That combination of activist intent and oblivious entitlement is actually a pretty spot-on parallel to the lily-white brand of “girl boss” feminism peddled by Kelly, Carlson, and their ilk, bringing the pairing of director and material—well-meaning but self-serving—into sharp relief.
Is it bad to educate right-of-center white people about sexual harassment? Not at all. Kelly, Carlson, and all the other women who have accused Ailes of sexual harassment over the years—not to mention the accusers of Fox News golden boy Bill O’Reilly, whose downfall is teased, but not dramatized, in Bombshell—did not earn how they were treated. They deserve to have their stories heard and believed, particularly by their fellow conservatives. But without pursuing a deeper understanding of the the toxic political environment to which they contributed, it’s unclear who else the film is for. If you’ve already accepted that treating your coworkers as sexual objects is bad, you’re unlikely to be shocked by Bombshell’s accusations, or enlightened by its insights.
106 Comments
Somebody said it in the monthly preview, so I’ll echo the sentiment:
Who is this movie for? Not for the FOX News Acolytes, because they’ll take no criticism – even if minor or justified. And, as this review points out, it can’t be for the other side, because it has to treat Megyn and Gretchen with kid gloves.
Academy voters? Maybe?
Green Book won last year.
Green Book was a hamfisted film in many ways but its intentions were at least good. This is like a diet version of The Big Short.
I disagree. Green Book was a white savior narrative about the father of the islamaphobic screenwriter of the movie based on an alleged friendship with a black musician. I say alleged as said musician’s family disputes the movie’s account of their relationship, at best it was strictly professional, and that at no point did the islamaphobic screenwriter consult with them and only made the movie right after the musician died.It’s a dishonest movie that says that racism isn’t a systemic problem but a problem of certain individuals that be taught not to be racist anymore.
“I just had to meet some people more racist than me”
Academy voters LOVE movies about the media.
Its for the people who know the story but not well, do not have strong feeling one way or the other about cable news channels, and exists is that very large gulf between the two group you mentioned. Basically, its for people who dont comment here.
It’s for the people of the land. The common clay of America. You know… morons.
It’s amazing how many people on liberal websites literally can’t contemplate that there are tens of millions (hundreds of millions?) who simply ARE NOT LIKE US here on Leftist Internet.
Are those people even real?
It’s clearly aimed at people who watched The Loudest Voice, but thought it should be shorter, better and star Margot Robbie.
This movie is aimed at Michael Bloomberg 2020 voters.
hitting the nail on the head…was going to say this movie is sqaurely aimed at my people like my parents who are, unsurprisingly, Bloomberg 2020 voters
So imaginary?
I imagine it’s what Hollywood producers think liberal audiences want, but is actually for people who thought Lean-In Feminism was a revolutionary brand of . . . well, I’d call it Fourth-Wave Feminism, but people who really bought into Lean-In Feminism don’t generally know enough about feminism in an academic sense to meaningfully distinguish waves in the movement.Functionally, it’s for people who think of “feminism” in terms of branding rather than in terms of an ethos, I think is what I’m saying.
I think Roach and Soderbergh both thought they could jump into Adam McKay’s lane, but the difference is that McKay has a good understanding of politics (and always has, as this Jacobin piece recounts) and is genuinely funny and pretty good at articulating ideas, even when he hits you over the head with it over and over like in Vice.Soderbergh seems to lose the plot in the Laundromat by trying to articulate a worldview and filtering it through a big event and really never capturing the essence of either, and Jay Roach – at least in Trumbo as I haven’t seen this – has every line seeming to be a setup for a witty comeback, like an even hackier Sorkin, meaning he’s focused on the comedy (which just isn’t that funny) as a way of delivering his political message, which seems limited in scope and kind of adorably simple.
Anyway I don’t think either of McKay’s recent films are masterpieces (trying to tackle the enigma that is the complete corruption of the Republican Party in 2 hours is like trying to eat a cruise ship, even through the eyes of someone as clutch as Dick Cheney) but the pretenders show that it’s not as easy as he makes it look.
It almost sounds like a counterpart to that stupid the-Purge-but-with-liberals-hunting-conservatives movie that got yanked.
It’s for the Krassensteins.
It’s precisely for the Fox “News” acolytes. If there’s a group of people more likely to pay good money to hate-watch something just so they can complain about how the fake media and the entertainment industry are mocking them, lying about them, and conspiring against them, while also (at the same time) overlooking them and ignoring them……well, I sure don’t know who it might be.
I wondered this same question about 3 shows into The Loudest Voice. What is the point of this? What did Russell Crowe et al. think they could bring anew to this depressing, infuriatingly shitty enterprise? Roger Ailes was garbage in every possible way. Fox News has been a boil on the ass of American society and was put into place and continues to be maintained by old white Americans’ worst, most malignant, racist, stupid tendencies. If they were trying to humanize them, they failed badly. If they trying to tell a story they didn’t think we knew or could guess on our own, they were mistaken.
White women.
I can only tell you the reason I’m going to see it. Three reasons to be exact: Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron, and Margot Robbie.
Same here. I like all the actors in this film and am excited to see them all in this. Plus, I’m not watching Star Wars next weekend and this is the only other option. My friends and I are seeing all the other movies out this weekend so we’ll be all caught up lol.
Finally saw this and it is a tough watch. Nobody deserves to be treated the way these women were treated, but they also treated people pretty terribly in equal but different ways.
EDIT: initial comment wasn’t relevant.
That was Laura Ingraham at the RNC, and her White Power Power Hour has only emphasized that action in the time since.
Fair enough I edited my comment as it wasn’t relevant to the topic.
That’s John Lithgow? Holy crap. I thought it was Joss Ackland.
It’s hard for me to imagine a major studio release that wouldn’t fall victim to the problems mentioned in this review. Often, the victims of injustice are not themselves innocent or even particularly sympathetic people, but that doesn’t justify what happened to them.
But that’s a difficult point to make while 1.) still being punchy and entertaining, 2.) avoiding just going overtly didactic with it, and 3.) not appearing to imply that they deserved it.
The actual sequence of events was that Kelly was kind of a crappy person, she was harassed by a complete asshole who should never have had power in the first place, and then she continued to be kind of a crappy person, but one that was now more vocally (and rightly) opposed to the bad thing that happened to her personally. That’s not a particularly uncommon journey, but have we ever seen it portrayed convincingly in all its nuance on film?
thank you; i feel like i’ve seen a similar sentiment in other reviews of movies like this, and this is typically how i feel about it. i think that maybe these two things would be better served by getting their own films instead of trying to cram it all into one, especially if it would require you to hold characters up as both victims and villains simultaneously. i think it’s fine that Bombshell just focuses on what it focuses on; i don’t need something reminding me every few minutes that these women also did bad things; it absolutely comes off as blame, or a suggestion that “they’re bad, so it’s fine that they suffered”. some people seem to have a hard time feeling bad about what happened to these women; i don’t, and i think it’s worrisome that some people can’t separate what happened to them and what they did to others. you miiiight be able to tastefully demonstrate how they contributed to the environment that caused them to suffer; that’s actually relevant to the subject. but as mentioned above, i think that’s hard to pull off in a tactful way and i’d rather see it skipped than done poorly.
I think it’s much more interesting to tackle that head on. Show them trying to get help but being ignored bc “you knew the deal when you went to work at Fox News”. Show how people on the left have very little sympathy for them and that people on the right just don’t believe them. The past 20 years have been all about conflicted male heroes/Anti-hero’s this film could have treated Kelly like a Tony Soprano, Don Draper or Walter White. The complexity of those characters are why they worked on shows that are remembered as some of the best ever.
The biggest problem with this idea is that Kelly’s an actual person, and telling a reality-based story about her has to deal with two issues: first, she doesn’t seem to have been changed by this story, so you can’t do the typical story arc of “bad person experiences injustice and becomes a better person” and second, to the extent that she might make a compelling antihero, her evil is of the most banal variety possible, so it’s going to be a boring story. Not sure if Breaking Bad would’ve been must-see television if the worst thing Walter White did was making vaguely racist comments while smiling prettily.
We’ve seen similar arcs, but no, not that arc. The trouble is, you kind of have to make a movie that Hollywood either cannot make, or no longer wants to make anymore. You’ll have to forgive me, as I just managed to get to Scorsese’s The Irishman over the weekend, and I’m still kind of mulling it. But it occurs to me that on the face of it, there’s not that much difference between a Scorsese gangster picture, and the kind of picture Bombshell is trying to be. In either case, what you’re dealing with is a morally-compromised protagonist, who first wildly succeeds in a corrupt and merciless institution, before the wheels turn and said protagonist gets caught up in the gears of that same institution. And what Scorsese’s really, really good at, is patiently laying out the fact that, however merciless and ugly the gangster system is, it’s not illogical. Scorsese’s a master at showing how a logical system can nevertheless be cruel and arbitrary, and what usually makes his protagonists compelling is that their cruelty and arbitrariness is an outgrowth of following the logic. And usually, what happens is that the incentives start to shift, and the rules that Scorsese’s protagonist has faithfully learned and played by the entire movie then become the very thing that trap him at the end, just because circumstances shifted, the incentive structure therefore changed, and the gangster system is a merciless system.But here, the lack of passage of time kind of undercuts the ability to describe the logic of the system, and how you navigate within it. Granted, it would be hard to show Kelly’s rise, because that’s a very different story. And it does sound like they try and use Margot Robbie’s character to show the beginning of that arc. But it nevertheless sounds like you’ve got too jarring a shift. Robbie’s character is at the beginning; Kelly’s navigated this system for (I think) at least a decade by this point. And there’s too jarring a shift from A-to-B, so you never really get a sense of how the logic of the Fox News environment plays out. And because of that, you never get a sense of how and why the characters had to be morally-compromised in order to navigate the logic of the system.
Also, part of Fox’s brand is making cruelty sound entirely reasonable. It’s hard to demonstrate, without resorting to some fairly hack tactics, how Carlson and Kelly enabled the system because anything they said on air sounded like good old fashioned common sense to the credulous.
I also read other reviews that said the movie was apt in portraying the complicit nature of these women in other things at fox, so I think this movie still deserves a fair shake in representing how these #metoo cultures come to exist.
The events of this story would seem to fall squarely into the “what did you think would happen?” category. A couple of women leveraged the Fox News platform to their personal benefit, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the environment they happily ignored would eventually snag them as well. Don’t interpret this as them being deserving of that treatment, but it certainly shouldn’t have been surprising.
The closest I can think of (and it’s strangely linked to another person who’s mortgaged their soul to FOX News) is the nuanced treatment of Claus von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune.
The Loudest Voice in the Room had its flaws, but sounds like it is leagues ahead of this take.
Pity that with such a great cast the end results sound so mediocre.
Charles Randolph *co-wrote* the screenplay for ‘The Big Short,’ and had much better source material to start (The real brains behind that was Lewis.) The bigger issue is that Jay Roach and Adam McKay are not actually interchangeable, and Roach hasn’t really done anything competent since 2004.
Next time you see the trailer, just replace all of the interesting title cards with ‘From the Director of Austin Powers and the Writer of Love and Other Drugs.’ It helps to block out ‘The Big Short’ coattail riding. I have to imagine that Michael Lewis is irked that the studios get to try to paint this as a spiritual sequel.
“Roach hasn’t really done anything competent since 2004.”
Sure, aside from his HBO movies.
I don’t know, I think this scene from The Campaign is as good as anything he’s ever done.
“But without pursuing a deeper understanding of the the toxic political environment to which they contributed, it’s unclear who else the film is for.”I don’t see how that is necessarily relevant to sexual harassment, though. Are there examples of these individuals downplaying harassment? Did they contribute in some way to a workplace culture that “allowed” this kind of stuff to go on? The reviewer’s approach seems to be, “I’m sorry you were harassed, but it’s more important that we remind everyone that you’re a bad person.”
It’s not that it’s “more important” but full context means that yes, these are ugly, vicious crimes that this happened to these women (and no one, no matter their politics, deserves it), but they are were also happy to collect paychecks creating and supporting the ecosystem that harmed others until it turned on them. The harassment is a part of the whole that is the toxicity of the Fox News brand, and a full recounting has to explain that these women had very public and vital roles to play in the creation and elevation of the brand.
How is sexual harassment part of the Fox News brand? That’s what I was wondering about.
Fox News made it very clear Bill O’Reilly wasn’t a problem to them for years even after multiple sexual harassment charges in 2004 and didn’t get around to firing him until after the Carlson story broke.And they still breathlessly defend a man who admitted it on tape and is facing over a dozen credible allegations as we speak.
Gotcha. That’s a good point about O’Reilly. I can see how his continued employment would reinforce that kind of culture. To what extent did Kelly and Carlson contribute to that, do think? Do they have an obligation to leave? I guess I’m wondering what their response should have been along the way.(I don’t see anything about either woman defending O’Reilly, btw. I just did a quick search, but there’s plenty of the opposite.)
its part of the right wing brand.voting right wing means you support rape.they decided this long ago.
You don’t think that the victims’ contribution to the network that regularly mocked and vilified feminists and anyone raising issues related to discrimination was relevant to a story about sexual harassment in their workplace?
That’s why I asked the question: are there examples of these individuals downplaying harassment? I thought that would have been relevant to support the reviewer’s point. The opening paragraph tries to draw a parallel with sexual assault investigation procedures on college campuses, but that’s pretty much it.
Examples in the movie of them downplaying harassment?
I meant in real life.
Actually, I would say it’s very relevant to sexual harassment. Just in the law, there are two kinds of sexual harassment. The first kind is quid pro quo harassment, which is usually very clear, was actually present here from the sound of it, and is usually quite frowned upon by juries.The second kind, however, is hostile work environment. And if you’ve ever done work in the field of workplace discrimination, you’d know both that this is the real problem that they’d have to try and address in a film like this, and that it’s necessary that they do so, because to put it bluntly, juries frequently just don’t accept this as an actionable problem. Literally, they can hear any amount of evidence about how toxic and ugly the workplace is, and then they’ll just nullify the law, because they won’t accept that she wasn’t complicit, that she couldn’t just quit, that this is just what happens in the workplace, that boys will be boys, whatever. However much rationalizing they need to do to define a workplace as not problematic (or at least, not sufficiently so to be worth monetary damages), they will usually do.And the worst thing is, the people who do the most rationalizing? Usually young women. As part of my trial course in law school, we handled a fake hostile work environment cause of action, and took it to mock trial. And in the semester that I was working on it, all of the juries, all 21 of them comprised of undergrads, voted to acquit. All of them. And it was the young college-age women on those juries who were pushing most for acquittal. They’re entire worldview is built around “It Won’t Happen To Me”, and they just don’t have the life experience to realize that Yes, It Will, and You Will Probably Do As Little As This Woman Did.
Oh certainty. I agree that the culture of a hostile work environment is important and the reviewer mentions that the movie does this well.But as I read it, the reviewer seemed to think the political problems of the individuals and their workplace deserved more focus. That’s what I was responding to.
I mean, right near the beginning of this article are two examples of Megyn Kelly doing just that….her saying an affirmative consent law violates men’s rights, and her telling harassment victims they can always say no. And there is probably plenty of room to explore how the punching-down, racial resentment power politics these women routinely engaged in is of a kind with the sort of sexual resentment power politics that enabled the sexual harassment that ran rampant at Fox News.
Yes, I mentioned the college consent law in a subsequent comment. I don’t see that as downplaying harassment, as the full discussion I found provides a more nuanced perspective on the adjudication process on college campuses and presumption of innocence. I don’t see any issue with telling women they can say no when one of the main issues is that women don’t feel like they can.I dunno about the rest, but it’s an interesting notion. I hadn’t considered it that way.
Well, if you’re just going to hand wave away examples of precisely what you’re purporting to ask for examples of, I’m not sure what exactly to tell you. It is certainly not the case that Kelly or Carlson has been out there saying “Women deserve to be raped and harassed and abused.” But it is the case, as the examples I cited indicate, that Kelly at least, takes positions on issues that would make it more difficult for women who are victims of abuse and harassment. FTR, I’m curious what you think are the meritorious arguments against an “affirmative consent” standard for sex, much less an argument that those standards basically eliminate the rights of men. And quite often, “no,” or speaking up, isn’t really a viable option for victims of harassment, and it’s probably worth thinking through why Kelly might have been in a better position to say “no” or push back against sexual harassment, given her status as a conventionally attractive white woman who also has, for much of her career, had a fair amount of power.
I don’t think I’m doing that. Here’s the more complete quotes I could find. “It is important to improve the rights of women who are victims of sexual assault on college campuses. But we are going in a direction where we almost entirely eliminate the rights of men. And there’s a presumption now in these campuses, thanks to the Obama administration, of guilt. There’s a presumption of non-consent. And if you are a young man who gets accused, it’s your burden to go in there and prove consent, and we’re getting to the point where you have to have a contract. And if you don’t, you’re gonna be presumed a rapist.”She’s speaking to the pattern of changes that have been made regarding how to handle sexual assaults at colleges. From the Chronicle of Higher Ed: https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Legal-Limits-of-Yes/234860 A quote from a former ACLU president, “…affirmative-consent rules violate rights of due process and privacy…Unless the guy can prove that his sexual partner affirmatively consented to every single contact, he is presumed guilty of sexual misconduct.”See also a legal article on yes-mean-yes: https://lawreview.law.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/lawreview/article/download/383/305 or The Atlantic’s articles on the broader topic https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the-uncomfortable-truth-about-campus-rape-policy/538974/And I really think it’s a stretch to use the second one as a criticism of her. It mostly certainly is easier for her to say no than someone with less power, but that doesn’t invalidate her statement.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to show with that quote unless you’re trying to show how dismissive she actually is towards attempts to mitigate the impact of rape culture. An affirmative consent bill does not “almost entirely eliminate the rights of men,” and it doesn’t require “a contract” to show consent. Those are absurd talking points that edge into MRA territory. Incidentally, when people cry foul about a standard that, *gasp* requires clear and affirmative consent for sex, they tell on themselves in a major way. And not for nothing, most men will never commit sexual assault and even more men will never be accused of sexual assault. Of course you can hold the “you can always say no” thing against her because it portrays a specific type of privilege that a lot of women will never have!
She gets silly with the contract; I agree with you on that. But as I said, and I think is clear in the quote, she is speaking to not just the affirmative consent change, but the series of changes made in an attempt to mitigate the impact of rape culture. I supported that point with additional articles, which argue that the changes are eliminating the rights of the accused (most of which are men).
This is getting far afield from the original discussion. We are now discussing the various ways in which the burden has shifted towards (mostly) men to assure that sexual encounters are consensual, rather than (mostly) women to say no, and whether that’s appropriate. Suffice it to say, I don’t think it is eliminating the rights of men for there to be an affirmative consent standard (which is what she is directly responding to), nor does adopting a preponderance of the evidence standard (which still places the burden of proof on accusers) violate the due process rights of the accused. But in any event, the point is Kelly at least has been a pretty consistent voice in arguing against things that would make life easier for women to avoid abuse and make life easier for women who have been abused.
Flat out lying as part of a sustained attempt to discredit any laws protecting woman against rape isn’t enough evidence for you? Take you’re sea-lioning ass somewhere else.
Yeah no, nothing in that first paragraph is true
You know that the answer to both of those questions is yes, right?
you simple?
Yes, the review specifically mentions a couple ways that Megyn Kelly supported sexual harassment. This is someone who worked at the bigotry factory then was shocked to discover that she’s not immune to the misogyny she pushes.
Cannot tell you how cathartic reading this was. Thank you for giving this film the review it deserves. That combination of activist intent and oblivious entitlement is actually a pretty spot-on parallel to the lily-white brand of “girl boss” feminism peddled by Kelly, Carlson, and their ilk, *me at my desk eating this shit up* “NOM NOM NOM NOM YES”
Nothing says #girlboss like Megyn Kelly wanting white male Santa.
I would watch the heck out of John Lithgow eating fried chicken.
That’s a very specific fetish you have there.
Looks like you missed a number of opportunities.
“I Never Thought The Leopards Would Eat MY Face: The Movie”
Jay Roach has been doing this type of movie longer than Adam McKay, but always for HBO before this.He directed Recount, about the 2000 election – And Game Change about Sarah Palin –
Didn’t he also do that really good LBJ film for HBO starring Bryan Cranston?
Oh yeah, I forgot about that one!Yes, he did.
Now I need to see Lithgow play Churchill. Kidman just doesn’t seem anything like Carlson (the “lemon scented floormop” as Jon Stewart once called her) at all. Making up a fake person for this so that you have somebody with plausible deniability or who could have innocently wandered into that den of shit (TWO people, apparently)…is that worse or better than fictionalized movies that do their subjects a disservice like “Hurricane” where they made up a fake surrogate son? I friggin hate when movies do this. Look, I am never going to forgive Savannah Guthrie for lionizing that little scumbag who mocked the Native American activist at the Capitol. We shouldn’t be letting people like Carlson off the hook, there is no reason for this movie to be made if it isn’t showing these assholes in their full glory, and the whole thing should HINGE around the fact that they don’t have any empathy and can’t understand these concepts until they happen to them (see: maternal leave also). The script should point by point how they still hammer women’s rights even after the harassment happened to them because to them it’s a item by item basis and only items that directly affect them are included. The fact that Megyn Kelly stayed scum after this awful thing happened to her isn’t something to be brushed aside, it should be the entire point.
He plays Churchill on The Crown.
ah the power of wishing
Now start wishing that Nicole Kidman has a massive crush on me.
honestly that interview where Nicole Kidman reveals she wanted Jimmy Fallon to start dating her is the only time I’ve really liked him in my entire life. The realization on his face. Oh lordt. That and the one where Kristen Bell meets a sloth are my two favorite talk show clips ever.
I’d like the looks of this movie a lot more if it was more complex. While not every woman experiences sexism to the same degree, or in the same ways, every woman does experience it, no matter what their skin color is or how wealthy they are. It’s just a shame that it seems so superficial here.
Not to mention the subject matter seems ripe for drama. How long can you look the other way if the current system benefits you? How much would you put up with before saying enough? What’s the appropriate message once you’ve made that call?
Not interested in this film, but it seems weird to point to Roach’s work as a comedy director with Austin Powers but not his other current-events-in-the-political-sphere HBO films Recount and Game Change at all.
NO one deserves harassment – or to be assaulted, victimized and oppressed. However, if you’re actively helping prop up a propaganda outlet for the patriarchy/GOP and expecting things to change for your white privileged ass only, my sympathy is tempered.
Exactly. Which in this case fuck everyone that would ever do this to anyone they hold positions of power over. And extra fuck you to anyone making excuses for those just because they’re in your side for this. These women promoted this harassment and assault etc for everyone else, but when it came to themselves it was too much. They are selfish.
Just to get into the epistemological weeds for a minute: Is there a meaningful difference between not sympathizing and thinking someone deserves what happened to them?I see this sentiment a lot (and have seen it repeatedly about this story in particular): “No one deserves X, but I have little or no sympathy for person Y that had X happen to them.” If someone actively participates in directly causing X, or at least indirectly (but deliberately) participates in an environment that causes X, then when X later happens to them, it seems like a bit of karmic justice.Maybe it depends on what “deserves” means. In practice, a statement like “He deserved X” means “I think X should happen to him.” That’s distinct from “I didn’t actively think that X should happen to him, but now that it has happened, I don’t feel sympathy for him,” but that’s a distinction so fine that I’m not sure there’s any meaningful difference.
‘Tempered’ sympathy – not non-existent. But I hear you. And it is a fine line between thinking a person who actively participated in a culture that abuses persons like them deserves it when it happens to them and/or having no sympathy when it does. I certainly don’t HOPE for this to happen to any woman, and take no pleasure when it does. And I would never feel they DESERVED it. But it is hard (for me) to feel sympathy or be surprised when talking heads from Faux Snooze suffer abuse from their own horrible coworkers and bosses.
Good review honestly! But this movie looks to weird all very forced. Kinda like look another white rich women talking…and no one cares.
This movie looks to be well made, with an excellent cast, but there’s no way I’m going to watch something that portrays Megyn Kelly in a sympathetic light.Ailes may be a reprehensible monster, but so, in other ways, is Kelly.
1, 2, or 3?
Normally I’d probably go 1,3,2 but Charlize Theron looks TOO much like her so I’ll go: 3,1,2
What? It wasn’t titled Aryan Women Nation?
So a “based on” flick keeps shit pithy and surface level? Huh. K.
wow, that photo has uncanny valley written all over it!
This film and material seem kind of cowardly. I am troubled that they have to have a “fictionalized” account of Ailes harassing a made up character in a way worse than what Kelly and Carlson claimed. It smacks of “you cannot slander the dead”. Notice they do not take on Bill O’Reilly, who would have sued them in a second. Even if you think O’Reilly would have lost a suit because he did it..it is pretty cowardly to not try.Plus, I really do not see these women as victims. They never complained of harassment until they were out the door and seems to me as they were gleefully playing the system there when it benefited them. Kelly and Carlson did not have a modicum of journalistic talent and were hired for their looks. They knew that and rode it to millions. They are like the bikini models who suddenly think their profession is sexist once they get old and cannot get gigs anymore.The fact that many “progressive” men including in the news business such as Lauer and Smith did objectively worse and there is no movies about them is also kind of telling. That these actresses would not give two craps about these women if they were on fire if it were any other issue other than it makes an organization they hate more look worse than it is is kind of the cherry on the cowardly top.
A lesbian Democrat working on Fox News as the producer of Bill O’Reilly’s show? That is maybe the most unrealistic thing I’ve heard in a while. I’d sooner believe that the moon sharks are finally invading.
This review is spot-on. Megyn Kelly should be an interesting
character to examine in this context. On the one hand, her revelations about
Ailes – coming from one of the network’s biggest stars, someone who had nothing
to gain from talking, and nothing that could be claimed as an ulterior motive –
was undeniably key in bringing Ailes down. That’s a good thing. Kelly is also a
fairly awful person who made her career spewing racist garbage and putting a
professional-seeming face on one of the most toxic media companies in modern
history. That’s a less-good thing. A good filmmaker could have shown how both
of these forces coexist in the same person without excusing or downplaying the
latter. But Roach doesn’t, and it also doesn’t help that half of this movie
plays like a bad SNL sketch, with random dudes in Groucho-mustaches walking
through like “hi, I’m Geraldo Rivera…I have to be going now.”
I have no interest in this but I can’t stop staring at Theron as Kelley. It’s almost eerie. That’s about as close casting can get to pulling off the same look
I didn’t know who it was until I read the cast list. Holy shit.
I have no interest in this but I can’t stop staring at Theron as Kelley. It’s almost eerie. That’s about as close casting can get to pulling off the same look
It’s casting, but it’s also excellent prosthetics work. They reshaped her face almost entirely.
Charles Randolph wrote Bombshell, as well as The Big Short and The Life of David Gale, two movies that are plenty critical of things people on the Right value (capitalism, Wall St., etc., and capital punishment), and this reviewer is the same writer who reports on all things #MeToo related. Doesn’t seem possible to get an unbiased review of this movie.
Did anyone else read that name as Kayla Popsicle?
Kate McKinnon? KATE MCKINNON ? kate mckinnon?You are never going to get off SNL taking roles like this.
“Who is this for? Not Fox News diehards, and not highly informed, internet-savvy liberals”The other 200 million Americans then? Can ya’ll seriously not even contemplate that the two groups mentioned above are still a minority, even combined?