White House Has Fallen

 White House Down
Director: Roland Emmerich
Cast: Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Richard Jenkins, Jason Clarke, Joey King, James Wood
Released: June 28, 2013

Olympus Has Fallen
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Cast: Gerald Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett,  Melissa Leo, Rick Yune, Dylan McDermott, Finley Jacobsen
Released: March 22, 2013

Remember in 1998 when both Armageddon and Deep Impact, both about asteroids destroying the earth, were released within months of each other? And wasn't there two movies about volcanoes erupting within the same year too? White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen are both about the White House being taken over by terrorists and one man (Channing Tatum for WHD and Gerald Butler for OHF) must stop them. Both movies came out earlier this year only separated by a few months. There are only two main differences that I can find in both movies. One is that OHF takes itself much more seriously than WHD. It has a very somber mood while WHD goes for the more blockbuster summer popcorn thrill ride. It even makes a meta joke when a guide is giving a tour of the White House and tells the group where they are standing is where the aliens blew up the White House in Independence Day. Apparently that line was not in the script, so good for Roland Emmerich for having a sense of humor to keep it in. (Just in case my mom is reading this, he directed Independence Day!) Also, the marketing! I saw trailers, commercials, and posters for WHD everywhere while I had no idea that OHF even existed until I saw it on DVD and heard somebody talk about it on a podcast when they were reviewing these two movies. I thought it was one of the straight to DVD releases!

Why don't we compare how similar they are? In the first time in Cinematic Sara history, I created this nifty table from my iMac's Pages:

White House Down		Olympus Has Fallen
POTUS: James Sawyer (Jamie Foxx) Even though Foxx isn’t as young as I thought he was, I could never believe him as the President of the United States. He was just never authoritative to me in a way, say, someone like Denzel Washington would be able to pull off. The First Lady is in Paris when the chaos happens.		POTUS: Ben Asher (Aaron Eckhart) Asher is a widower with a young son. His wife died in a car accident a year prior when their car slid into an icy bridge and she plummeted to her death. There was only time to save Asher.
The hero: John Cale (Channing Tatum) First of all, I could watch Channing Tatum in anything. He is very nice to look at! Cale is a bodyguard assigned to the Speaker of the House of Representatives. He gets involved with helping Sawyer when he is in the White House on a tour with his daughter when the mayhem begins.		The hero: Mike Banning (Gerald Bulter) Banning used to be head of the security team for the POTUS, but he was pulled from the team because he was the one who saved the POTUS and couldn’t save the FLOTUS so it brings back bad memories for the President. When Banning sees something is wrong at the White House, he goes into Jack Bauer mode.
The (main) bad guy: Emil (Jason Clark, the guy from Zero Dark Thirty). With the help from the inside, he leads his men inside and they start taking hostages. The bad guys sneak into the WH acting like janitors.		The (main) bad guy: North Korean terrorist, Kang (Rick Yune) who is posing as the South Korean’s Prime Minister’s assistant. That way he is invited into the White House when Asher has a meeting with the PM. After the WH is surrounded by Kang’s men and the security guys have all been taken out, Kang takes the POTUS and others (including the Secretary of Defense (Melissa Leo)). Kang wants Asher to pull troops from his country where there’s a civil war going on and he wants the codes for the missiles he plans to launch and the only people who know them are the POUTS and two other officials in the room.
Inside Man: Martin Walker, retired head of the Presidential Detail (James Wood) He is the one who is behind the overthrow of the White House because his son was killed in war and he wants revenge. He also wants codes that will launch a missile.		Inside Man: ex-Secret Service agent-turned-traitor Dave Forbes (Dylan McDermott). I don’t remember why he was working with the North Koreans, but Banning doesn’t know his old pal is one of the bad guys until Forbes says Kang’sname and Banning asks him how he knew his name. He tells Forbes to be on the good side for once and radios Kang to tell him he has Banning captured and after he does that, Banning kills him. Dude, pick a side and stay with it!
The veteran: Speaker of the House, Eli Ralpheson (Richard Jenkins). He is the one Cale works for and he is also behind the whole plot as well. He is promised if he goes along with it, he will be the next POTUS because they launch a missile at Air Force One which has the VP in it. (What’s this an epihour of 24?) But what he and Walker failed to realize is that they didn’t succeed at killing the President and their plans are thwarted.		The veteran: Speaker of the House, Allan Trumball (Morgan Freeman). See, even the veteran actors are playing the same roles! Unlike Ralpheson, Trumball is a good guy and has to take over as POTUS for five minutes when it is feared that Asher is dead.
The kid: Emily (Joey King) Cale’s daughter who has an unusual fascination with politics for a girl her age. Her flag waving skills helps save her dad and POTUS at the end of the day (don’t ask). She has a YouTube channel and takes videos of the terrorists as she’s hiding. She is captured and brought into a room with the other hostages, but not before she uploads the videos to her channel and they go viral and soon it’s all over the news. The journalists say her name and post her picture. Now I  shouldn’t compare this ridiculous event to a real, horrifying one, but I remember when Columbine happened live (as this was happening live too), students would call news channels from inside the school to tell them what’s going on, but the journalists would be very careful to say DO NOT TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE so they wouldn’t be found and shot in case there were any TVs on. Why are these journalists saying her name and posting picture of her when her hostages could be watching it on TV? That was just stupid and that would never happen.		The kid: Connor (Finley Jacobsen) He has nothing to do except be saved. After he is safe, Banning continues on with getting the POTUS and defeating Kang. This category is the only one where there’s a major difference between the two movies. It’s the only one where the characters are played by opposite genders. And while Connor is barely in the movie, Emily plays a very big role in hers.
The (main) female: Carol Finnerty (Maggie Gyllenhall). She works as an assistant for the POTUS and is not in the White House when it’s taken over. She’s working on the outside to help Cale and Sawyer escape.		The (main) female: Director of the Secret Service, Lynne Jacobs (Angela Basset). She fully and completely trusts Banning with her life and with the life of the President. She knows if anybody is going to save Asher, it’s going to be Banning! She’s also on the outside helping Banning.

 

A Case of Mistaken Identity

Dave
Director: Ivan Reitman
Cast: Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Frank Langella, Ben Kingsley, Ving Rhames, Charles Grodin
Released: May 7, 1993

Oscar nominations:
Best Original Screenplay - Gary Ross (lost to Jane Campion for The Piano)

When Bill Mitchell, the President of the United States (played by Kevin Kline), suffers a stroke while having an affair with one of his interns, a normal guy named Dave Kovic (also played by Kline) is called in to "pose" as Mitchell as he could be his twin. It's the idea of the Chief of Staff, Bob Alexander, (Langella) because his plan is to feed Dave everything he wants Dave to do as POTUS, but Bob is the one making all the calls.

It turns out that Dave looks so much like the President, he has everyone fooled, including the First Lady (Weaver). The President and First Lady have been having marital problems lately and haven't been spending much time together except for press conferences, but she knows something is amiss when her husband all of a sudden starts caring about things and wanting to help people because the real President was known for being kind of a prick.

There are lots of cameos in this film, most of them being politicians who I didn't know at the time and didn't know now. One of the cameos I did know but shouldn't have was John McLaughlin of The McLaughlin Group. If you're under fifty, you probably have no idea what The McLaughlin Group is. It's a boring show that was on Friday nights on PBS and it had the host, who was, like, 100 years old and other old geezers on it talking about really boring political issues. I only know this show because my brother (who was high school aged around the time) wanted to watch it because he was into politics. I always wanted to watch my TGIF shows like Boy Meets World or Step by Step, but noooooo! We had to watch the stupid McLaughlin Group! Ugh!

There's a funny cameo with Oliver Stone being interviewed by Larry King because he thinks there's a conspiracy behind President acting differently all of a sudden. If I hadn't seen JFK recently, I probably wouldn't have gotten the joke. Arnold Schwarzenegger even has a cameo and this was way before he became the Govenator.

Fun movie, but not believable in the least.

The President Who Got Caught

Frost/Nixon
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Kevin Bacon, Rebecca Hall, Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell
Released: December 5, 2008

Oscar nominations:
Best Picture (lost to Slumdog Millionaire)
Best Director - Ron Howard (lost to Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire)
Best Actor - Frank Langella (lost to Sean Penn for Milk)
Best Adapted Screenplay - Peter Morgan (lost to Simon Beaufoy for Slumdog Millionaire)
Best Editing (lost to Slumdog Millionaire)

This film is based on a theater play of the same name that came out a couple years before. Both are based on the 1977 interviews the 37th President of the United States (that Lyndon Johnson sure was sandwiched between two of the most well-known Presidents of the 20th century, wasn't he?) gives to British journalist David Frost who's more known for hosting variety-type shows than being a hard-hitting journalist. I didn't even know these interviews existed until the movie was making its promotional rounds. Obviously I never saw them because I wasn't born yet, but I was familiar with Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal.

Because of that, it would be a huge deal to score an interview with Nixon and Frost and his producer end up paying big bucks for it. There's many terms and agreements they must abide to, such as only using 25% of their interview to discuss Watergate. Months before the interview, Frost and two assistants he hires for research, dig up any and all information they can find about Watergate so they're fully prepared.

Langella (Nixon) and Sheen (Frost) reprise their theater roles in the film. Because the first time I saw the actual David Frost was from a clip they show of the interviews in the special features, I thought Sheen did a good job of portraying him, but because I was so familiar with Nixon as a public figure, the first scene I saw with him played by Langella, I just didn't buy him as Nixon, but as the movie went on, I was able to let myself believe he was Nixon.

During the first couple of interviews, Frost has a difficult time getting certain questions asked because Nixon keeps it focused on his more positive achievements during his time in the White House and doesn't let Frost get a word in. The final interview is when the real questions are finally answered and Nixon has no choice but to answer them.

I've never seen the actual interviews, but if you were to watch them, then watch the movie, you would see that they are verbatim.

I avoided this movie for awhile because I thought it would be boring, but it was actually pretty good and kept me interested.

The President Who Got Shot

JFK
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Kevin Costner,  Gary Oldman, Sissy Spacek, Tommy Lee Jones, Joe Pesci
Released: December 20, 1991

Oscar nominations:
Best Picture (lost to The Silence of the Lambs)
Best Director - Oliver Stone (lost to Jonathan Demme for The Silence of the Lambs)
Best Supporting Actor - Tommy Lee Jones (lost to Jack Palance for City Slickers)
Best Adapted Screenplay - Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar (lost to Ted Tally for The Silence of the Lambs)
Best Cinematography (won)
Best Sound (lost to Termination 2)
Best Film Editing (won)
Best Score - John Williams (lost to Alan Menken for Beauty and the Beast)

I've only seen a few Oliver Stone movies. They range from ones I really liked (Platoon) to the God-awful (Alexander - which, by the way, I had to see in the theater because other members of my family wanted to see it and my choice for seeing National Treasure was overruled). I would say his heyday for great movie-making was the late '80s/early '90s which JFK falls nicely into. 

I watched the special edition of the DVD which is about three hours and twenty minutes, so I treated it like a miniseries and watched it over a span of about three or four days. Whether or not you believe there's a huge conspiracy behind the assassination of the 35th President of the United States (which the entire movie is based around), you can't deny this is a fascinating film. 

First of all, the star power is pretty amazing. I already listed the actors with the most screen time, but the film also includes Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, John Candy, Kevin Bacon, John Larroquette, Ed Asner, Donald Sutherland, Laurie Metcalf, and Wayne Knight. 

The film begins with a little montage of Kennedy's life in office and soon begins after his death on November 22, 1963 in Dallas and goes all the way to 1969. It's based on a book written by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (played by Costner) who becomes obsessed with proving that there was a huge cover-up behind Kennedy's death. He becomes so obsessed that he ignores death threats and puts his family second to the case - he reminded me of Robert Graysmith in Zodiac and how he was obsessed with finding the identify of the killer. 

The movie does make a pretty good case of there being a conspiracy linked to JFK's death, but then again, it's what the movie/Stone wants you to think. Garrison and his team interview witnesses who saw Kennedy's assassination first hand and their recounts don't match up with what's documented by the government/police; the doctor who performed JFK's autopsy testifies that government officials kept a close eye on him as he looked at the body and wasn't allowed to examine the gunshot wound; one of Kennedy's bodyguards tells Garrison he just happened to be sent to an assignment in Antarctica when the assassination occurred and that security was very lax (even if Kennedy had never been killed, I cannot ever imagine the POTUS being allowed to ride in a frickin' convertible - that just seems really stupid); it's determined that there's no way Lee Harvey Oswald (played by Oldman) could have shot Kennedy from the angle of the window he was supposedly at and there must have been two other assassins involved as well.

The CIA, FBI, Mafia, Secret Service, and even Vice-President Lyndon Johnson are all considered to be part of the cover-up. They wanted Kennedy dead because of his involvement in the Bay of Pigs and he wanted to pull troops from the Vietnam War. They also weren't happy with the changes he had in store for America. I guess Kennedy was a little too ahead of his time back then as the sixties weren't the most noble times for the U.S. Garrison also thinks they had something to do with the deaths of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. 

There's some gruesome footage of Kennedy's murder shown at a trial. For some reason, Stone feels the need to show a clip of part of Kennedy's head being blown off not once, but about six times. Yeah, didn't need to see that, Ollie. Luckily it's not a close-up, but you can still tell it's very graphic. He also shows a close-up photo of the deceased Kennedy presumably taken during his autopsy. It's very jarring because his eyes are open. Ever heard the term "dead eyes"? Yeah, it's ever creepier when the person in question is actually, you know, dead.

I was flipping through an almanac from 2000 and it has the Kennedy assassination listed as number 6 of the top 100 news stories of the century. Honestly, I think that's kinda low - I would rank it as at least one of the top three! 

If you're fascinated by history, have three plus hours to kill, and even have an inkling that there was some shady business involved with Kennedy's murder, then give JFK a whirl.