Watching this, I was two-thirds ashamed to be an American, with our recent history running from Richard Nixon through the phony justifications of the Iraq invasion, but one-third proud to live in a culture that could produce such a clever, popular takedown of a living public figure. Some caricatures misfired – especially Steve Carrell’s Donald Rumsfeld – but I appreciated the effort to match actor with historical figure, like Eddie Marsan for Paul Wolfowitz. Most of the plot was familiar, but the light it concentrated on certain facts, such as Cheney’s sweetheart deals with Halliburton and the lack of a background check when he selected himself for the vice-presidency, still made me cringe. Christian Bale was amazing, but I doubt his Oscar chances: some voters must be Republicans; some will say it was impersonation, not acting; and others will just be so repulsed that they won’t want to see Cheney/Bale get any awards. I can see why this movie is not for everyone: it is tendentious, flip – one reviewer called in “meanspirited” – and treats very serious matters like a Doonesbury cartoon; but director Adam McKay’s storytelling style was original and consistent, and I laughed when I wasn’t cringing.

The opening ten minutes was a bracingly, convincingly staged school shooting and aftermath that gave me hope for an original, relevant film. The pre-Natalie Portman Celeste character then sings her original song in response to the terror, it goes You-Tube viral and the film collapses into cliche and the movie version of life. Her song is about one-quarter as good as the equivalent moment in A Star Is Born. Worse, however, is Natalie Portman, who takes over the character 15(?) years later. She not only sings songs as bad as the later music in A Star, but she is the most unattractive figure I can remember seeing in a movie: her looks, her hairstyles, her mannerisms, her actions, her interpersonal relations, her public persona are all painful to sit through. Willem Dafoe, fresh off At Eternity’s Gate, narrates.

Better than Ocean’s Eight, but not by much, this female heist movie had improbabilities piled on implausibilities, with enough loose threads to make a mitten. Viola Davis and Liam Neeson seemed an unlikely pair from the get-go (with Neeson overexposed in the trailers before the show), but the idea that the other widows would go along with her was topped only by their instantaneous competence, which in turn was superseded by plot twists from out of the blue, thanks perhaps to screenwriter Gillian Flynn. The movie’s saving grace was the supporting performances of Michelle Rodriguez and the gorgeous Elizabeth Debicki. Perhaps to appease the unwritten rules governing Hollywood, there were gratuitous shots of cigarette smoking and female nudity.

The “feel-good” movie of the year, with scene after scene of the good guys standing up to the bigots, one great song after another filling the soundtrack, and an almost entire cast of characters the modern, educated audience could feel superior to. Danish-American Viggo Mortenson was splendid as the minor Mafioso Tony Lip and Linda Cardellini as his adorable wife was the cherry on top. Her role was small, but she got the last and best line. There was nothing subtle or unpredictable about the dialogue or plot except for Mahershala Ali’s portrayal of the musician Don Shirley as a black man in a white world with a lot of issues, which I never really figured out.