It is difficult to review a movie that you thought was good, so I didn't get around to doing this until more than a week since I went to see Frost/Nixon. Really, I wish I had done this blogging thing back when I saw Juno, because I could have summoned thousands of words of pure vitriol after seeing that shitbasket. Anyhoo, here are my thoughts on Frost/Nixon:
Frank Langella was awesome. I haven't seen The Wrestler yet, although I want to, but Mickey Rourke better blow my fucking mind if he's going to deserve the best actor Oscar. I obviously have no memories of Richard Nixon, but Langella seems to have captured a certain slimy charisma that I assume is pretty representative of the man.
This movie really should have just been called Nixon and Occasionally Frost, because Langella just destroys everyone else in the movie. I only know Michael Sheen as Tony Blair in The Queen (where he was pretty good), but he basically doesn't have a character to play in this movie. If this movie was meant to be a showdown between two opposing forces then maybe Ron Howard or the script writers should have taken a little time to make David Frost into a character, not just some random British guy with sideburns who happens to be on TV and only speaks as a reaction to the superior characters surrounding him.
Sam Rockwell was good as the researcher who hates Richard Nixon. Probably his best performance since Charlie's Angels, although it lags slightly behind his one line in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
I didn't really get the point of the whole docu-drama elements of the movie. Just tell the story stright up without the useless taking head bits thrown in--they detracted from the movie.
I don't know if the point was to get me to feel sorry for Richard Nixon, but that basically was the outcome of watching this movie. We get that he's a scumbag, but he a likeable scumbag and the whole movie therefore comes off as a little too sympathetic towards him.
All in all a very good movie. Probably the only Ron Howard movie I have liked besides Apollo 13. I give it a 3.8/4 on the dtro scale of good.
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