I'm saying that when the President does it, it's *not* illegal!
Following the resignation of US President Richard Nixon (
Frank Langella), television talk show host David Frost (
Michael Sheen)
wants to arrange a series of interviews with him to air on television.
Part of the reason Frost thinks the interviews would be compelling to
both the public and the television networks is that Nixon never admitted
any guilt of or offered any apology for the Watergate scandal which led
to his resignation.. Nixon
believes he can railroad Frost, who is better known as a pop cultural
entertainment styled interviewer than an investigative political
interviewer. However, Frost has every intention on these interviews
being hard hitting and pointed; in addition to his producer John Birt (
Matthew MacFayden), Frost hires two investigative reporters known for their previous exposés on Nixon: Bob Zelnick (
Olivier Platt) and Jim Reston (
Sam Rockwell). Nixon's chief adviser for the interviews is his current chief of staff, Jack Brennan (
Kevin Bacon).
The Two Towers has always been my favorite installment in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's an incredible accomplishment - it's a popular belief that the middle part of the trilogy is always the weakest. We don't have the fun of being introduced to the world the movie is set in and we already know all the main characters plus it doesn't provide the conclusion the third part does. But for me, The Two Towers is not only (however slight) improvement over The Fellowship of the Ring but it also doesn't feel too long like The Return of the King did in its last 40 minutes.
I remember when I first saw The Fellowship of the Ring, 11 years ago. I loved the movie. I loved The Two Towers even more and though I'm not a big fan of The Return of the King it still had many unforgettable and moving moments. The Hobbit, which will be inevitably compared to The Lord of the Rings, really suffers when that comparison is made. There are so many problems with it I hardly know where to begin. It doesn't help that I didn't read the book and yet I still didn't love the movie - what I mean is that I was completely new to this story, yet many times I was really bored.
Robert Zemeckis is not a risk taker. He makes movies that play things safe - animation, ultimately feel good flicks with Tom Hanks, occasional black comedies. Even his thriller What Lies Beneath, while very good, is pretty subtle for the genre. Flight may just be his ballsiest film to date, but it suffers from incredibly messy script - the film, more often than not, feels very strange - it mixes a drama about addiction, dark comedy and thriller. Many times things are so heavy-handed you are rolling your eyes. But damn if it's not worth seeing.