Frost/Nixon

I dug the Frost/Nixon flick; I think it pulled off the rare trick of making both combatants sympathetic and likable, but without being schmaltzy. The Frost optimism running into his staff's pessimism in his painful "come to my birthday party please" scene hit the ol' Xmas heartstrings, and whenever I started worrying they were veering into William Hurt in Broadcast News rewrites, they saved themselves. The Nixon character was great too, tho I'm annoyed they felt the need to show him disapproving of a multi-racial relationship in a "okay, we hafta throw a 'gee, wasn't Nixon an asshole?'" moment, using the ol' tried & true "oh, he's a racist" tool. But if you're making a flick with Nixon in it, hurry up and finish it so that Frank Langella can play him.

I also liked at the end when Reston comments that Nixon's legacy was having the word "gate" attached to the name of every scandal and that we are indebted to him for this. I wrote the same thing as well as how fortunate we are that "gate" is a pretty cool word HERE.