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DVD (13)
Nixon is infinitely more complex than George W. Bush, which is probably why this one slice of his life is more intriguing than "W," which covers decades.
All this makes for great entertainment on the big screen, though the real legacy of the Nixon interviews is more vexing than Morgan would have us understand.
The result is involving, engrossing cinema -- more thrilling, in fact, than Howard's The Da Vinci Code -- filmmaking of a type rarely seen anymore and sorely missed.
This is the irony of Frost/Nixon: Though it chronicles the moment when (in theory) the 37th president of the United States was cut down to size, the movie's presentation of him is utterly larger than life.
Langella is not a natural Nixon; he has a voluptuary's face and a self-assurance the president only dreamed of. So he burrows into Nixon and comes out with a figure who is less a simulacrum than the definitive interpretation.
An absorbing film replete with telling moments and powerful performances.
David Frost wasn't Richard Nixon's foe so much as that camera's red light, which Ron Howard films as futuristic, robotic and destructive from Nixon's vantage point. What audiences deduce from one shot can imprint how an entire era is interpreted.
The sparring, the research, the failed strategies, and the returns for more elicit an image of boxing more than anything else; while "two men in shorts punch each other until one cannot continue" is also dry on paper, in practice it is much more visceral
Howard can't, as someone mentions in the film, distinguish between a performer and a journalist
Entertaining and provocative...a satisfying intellectual bout. [Blu-ray]
... Plays like an epic tragedy and is nothing short of riveting.
Extras include a short featurette on the Nixon Library and - best of all - one comparing key interview footage from the movie with comparable footage from the real interviews.
Clearly the work of a mature filmmaker, one with the patience and self confidence to make a smart film whose success is largely in the hands of its talented cast.
A belated opportunity for any still-embittered Baby Boomers to feel vindicated and to bask in Nixon's humiliation.
Peter Morgan's play about the behind-the-scenes research, negotiation and fundraising that produced the Frost-Nixon interviews may not sound like natural-born movie material...But the talk is choice, and the film... is mesmerizing.
The history lesson is a nice bonus, but it's the art and the acting that give the film its power and resonance.
The director of Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind serves up a merely pleasing, vaguely edifying tale of penitence and redemption, or something like that.
Estupendo cine sobre periodismo y política, que logra fascinar con sus entretelones de una entrevista crucial que es presentada casi como si fuera una pelea de boxeo.
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