W.
I went to see Oliver Stone's 'W.' at the cinema last night and it was an odd and inconsistent experience but no less enjoyable for it. The tone was all over the place, one minute it felt like a sort of TV movie, the next it was Forrest Gump, the next it was a heavy-handed Rory Bremner sketch. The 'war room' scenes were practically indistinguishable from Dr Strangelove, with Richard Dreyfuss's Dick Cheney as the macciavellian warmonger (not Rumsfeld, as one would perhaps expect) and Toby Jones's Karl Rove lurking Strangelove-like in the shadows. Thandie Newton's Condoleeza was so obviously played for laughs they may as well have cast a blacked-up Ronnie Ancona, or even Alistair MacGowan for that matter. Josh Brolin as W himself, on the other hand, plays the whole thing very straight, so straight that the couple of 'Bushisms' seem very awkwardly crowbarred in. The Forrest Gump thing was brought to mind not only by the fun doctored news footage (which I'm a sucker for) but by the running scenes and the way W just sort of bumbles naively through life. W's life is very much like a box of chocolates. There's a really nice running motif where W finds himself alone and helpless - having a heart attack whilst out for a jog or choking on a crisp - and it just cuts to him doing something else, perfectly fine, no explanation as to how he got out of the predicament. He just seems to be lucky. Brolin and Stone portray W as a buffoonish, likeably well-intentioned everyman. It made me think of Tony Blair's interview with Jon Stewart where Stewart asks him "What is it with you and W" and Blair just shrugs and says "I like him". And yet while his motivations are selfless they also drive this fierce ambition at the same time. There are these sort of Arabian Nights-like moments where Bush keeps reminding his deputies and advisors that he's in charge and they just smile and nod, Grand-Vizier-like.

Mainly, the film made me feel very hungry. I went to the cinema straight from work and W is eating in most of the scenes. He's always tucking into some tasty-looking sandwich. Don't go on an empty stomach!