#14: POLITICAL RUMBLE
DR STRANGELOVE
MILK
NETWORK
[Film/Talk] My Movie's Better #14: POLITICAL RUMBLE
Mild Language
This week Russell and Kevin talk about the films Dr. Strangelove, Milk, and Network
My Movie's Better is a film analysis show where my cohost and I pick films the other has never seen. The rubber match film is chosen by members of our facebook group. The Triple Threat Battle of Cinema
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| Dr. Strangelove | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster by Tomi Ungerer
| |
| Directed by | Stanley Kubrick |
| Produced by | Stanley Kubrick |
| Screenplay by |
|
| Based on | Red Alert by Peter George |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Laurie Johnson |
| Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor |
| Edited by | Anthony Harvey |
Production
company | |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release date
|
|
Running time
| 94 minutes[1] |
| Country | |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1.8 million[3] |
| Box office | $9.4 million (North America)[3] |
- Peter Sellers as:
- Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, a British RAF exchange officer
- President Merkin Muffley, the President of the United States
- Dr. Strangelove, the wheelchair-using nuclear war expert and former Nazi[5]
- George C. Scott as General Buck Turgidson, the USAF Chief of Staff
- Sterling Hayden as Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper, a paranoid SAC commander
- Keenan Wynn as Colonel Bat Guano, the Army officer who finds Mandrake and the dead Ripper
- Slim Pickens as Major T. J. "King" Kong, the B-52 Stratofortress bomber's commander and pilot
- Peter Bull as Soviet Ambassador Alexei de Sadeski
- James Earl Jones as Lieutenant Lothar Zogg, the B-52's bombardier
- Tracy Reed as Miss Scott, General Turgidson's secretary and mistress, the film's only female character. Reed also appears as "Miss Foreign Affairs," the centerfold in the June 1962 issue[6] of Playboy magazine that Major Kong (Slim Pickens) is perusing just before he is notified of the radio message ordering "Wing Attack – Plan R" by Lt. "Goldie" Goldberg (Paul Tamarin).[7]
- Shane Rimmer as Capt. Ace Owens, the co-pilot of the B-52
Dr. Strangelove is Kubrick's highest rated film on Rotten Tomatoes,[67] holding a 99% approval rating (based on 76 reviews) with an average rating of 9.1/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Stanley Kubrick's brilliant Cold War satire remains as funny and razor-sharp today as it was in 1964."[68] The film also holds a score of 96 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 11 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim." The film is ranked number 7 in the All-Time High Scores chart of Metacritic's Video/DVD section.[69] It was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Dr. Strangelove is on Roger Ebert's list of The Great Movies,[70] and he described it as "arguably the best political satire of the century". One of the most celebrated of all film comedies,[71] it is the only one that made the top 10 in the 2002 Sight & Sounddirectors' poll,[72] and John Patterson of The Guardian wrote, "There had been nothing in comedy like Dr Strangelove ever before. All the gods before whom the America of the stolid, paranoid 50s had genuflected – the Bomb, the Pentagon, the National Security State, the President himself, Texan masculinity and the alleged Commie menace of water-fluoridation – went into the wood-chipper and never got the same respect ever again."[73] It is also listed as number 26 on Empire's 500 Greatest Movies of All Time, and in 2010 it was listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 best films since the publication's inception in 1923.[74] The Writers Guild of Americaranked its screenplay the 12th best ever written.[75]
| Milk | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster
| |
| Directed by | Gus Van Sant |
| Produced by | |
| Written by | Dustin Lance Black |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Danny Elfman |
| Cinematography | Harris Savides |
| Edited by | Elliot Graham |
Production
company |
|
| Distributed by | Focus Features |
Release date
|
|
Running time
| 128 minutes[1] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $20 million[2] |
| Box office | $54.6 million[2] |
- Sean Penn as Harvey Milk
- Emile Hirsch as Cleve Jones
- Josh Brolin as Dan White
- Diego Luna as Jack Lira
- James Franco as Scott Smith
- Alison Pill as Anne Kronenberg
- Victor Garber as Mayor George Moscone
- Denis O'Hare as State Senator John Briggs
- Joseph Cross as Dick Pabich
- Stephen Spinella as Rick Stokes
- Lucas Grabeel as Danny Nicoletta
- Jeff Koons as Art Agnos
- Ashlee Temple as Dianne Feinstein
- Wendy Tremont King as Carol Ruth Silver
- Steven Wiig as McConnely
- Kelvin Han Yee as Gordon Lau
- Howard Rosenman as David Goodstein
- Ted Jan Roberts as Dennis Peron
- Robert Chimento as Phillip Burton
- Zachary Culbertson as Bill Kraus
- Mark Martinez as Sylvester
- Brent Corrigan as Telephone Tree #3
- Dave Franco as Telephone Tree #5
- Dustin Lance Black as Castro Clone
The Advocate, while supporting the film in general, criticized the choice of Penn given the actor's support for the Cuban governmentdespite the country's anti-gay rights record.[36] Human Rights Foundation president Thor Halvorssen said in the article "that Sean Penn would be honored by anyone, let alone the gay community, for having stood by a dictator that put gays into concentration campsis mind-boggling."[36] Los Angeles Times film critic Patrick Goldstein commented in response to the controversy, "I'm not holding my breath that anyone will be holding Penn's feet to the fire."[36]
| Network | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster
| |
| Directed by | Sidney Lumet |
| Produced by | Howard Gottfried Fred C. Caruso |
| Written by | Paddy Chayefsky |
| Starring | |
| Narrated by | Lee Richardson |
| Music by | Elliot Lawrence |
| Cinematography | Owen Roizman |
| Edited by | Alan Heim |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (USA & Canada) United Artists (International) |
Release date
|
|
Running time
| 121 minutes[1] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $3.8 million |
| Box office | $23.7 million[2] |
- Faye Dunaway as Diana Christensen
- William Holden as Max Schumacher
- Peter Finch as Howard Beale
- Robert Duvall as Frank Hackett
- Wesley Addy as Nelson Chaney
- Ned Beatty as Arthur Jensen
- Beatrice Straight as Louise Schumacher
- Jordan Charney as Harry Hunter
- William Prince as Edward Ruddy
- Lane Smith as Robert McDonough
- Marlene Warfield as Laureen Hobbs
- Conchata Ferrell as Barbara Schlesinger
- Carolyn Krigbaum as Max's secretary
- Arthur Burghardt as the Great Ahmet Khan
- Cindy Grover as Caroline Schumacher
- Darryl Hickman as Bill Herron
- Lee Richardson as the Narrator (voice)
- Lance Henriksen as Network lawyer (uncredited)
Network opened to acclaim from critics, and became one of the big hits of 1976–77. Vincent Canby, in his November 1976 review of the film for The New York Times, called the film "outrageous ... brilliantly, cruelly funny, a topical American comedy that confirms Paddy Chayefsky's position as a major new American satirist" and a film whose "wickedly distorted views of the way television looks, sounds, and, indeed, is, are the satirist's cardiogram of the hidden heart, not just of television but also of the society that supports it and is, in turn, supported."[21] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film four stars out of four, calling it "a very funny movie that takes an easy target and giddily beats it to death."[22] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times put the film on his list of the 10 best of the year.[23]
In a review of the film written after it received its Academy Awards, Roger Ebert called it a "supremely well-acted, intelligent film that tries for too much, that attacks not only television but also most of the other ills of the 1970s," though "what it does accomplish is done so well, is seen so sharply, is presented so unforgivingly, that Network will outlive a lot of tidier movies."[24] Seen a quarter-century later, Ebert added the film to his Great Movies list and said the film was "like prophecy. When Chayefsky created Howard Beale, could he have imagined Jerry Springer, Howard Stern, and the World Wrestling Federation?"; he credits Lumet and Chayefsky for knowing "just when to pull out all the stops."[25]
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