4. Frost/Nixon
Frost/Nixon is a play written by British play-write, Peter Morgan. It was performed in London in 2006 and starred Michael Sheen and Frank Langella as Frost and Nixon respectively. It detailed the televised interviews between enigmatic TV personality, David Frost, and disgraced former-President Richard Nixon. Now I'll admit, the Watergate Scandal was before my time and as such, I'm not entirely au fait with the political ins and outs of the situation , but its a credit to Morgan's writing, and the performances of both Sheen and Langella, that I would rank this so favorably in my list of films. Joined by a fantastic supporting cast including; Kevin Bacon, Rebecca Hall, Matthew McFayden, Oliver Platt, Toby Jones and Hollywood's most underrated actor, Sam Rockwell, the film is sharp, accurate and intense. Each character adds their own personal views to the story, and this serves to dilute the facts among a sea of opinions. Its Frost's job to remove both himself and the ex-President from the high tensions and political outrage that was going on at the time, to re-discover these facts, in black and white, through the series of interviews that he'd managed to arrange. The chemistry between Sheen and Langella is the driving force of this film and is demonstrated, in my opinion, most notably during the midnight phone call between the two. Whilst this interaction never occurred in real life, Morgan took inspiration from midnight phone calls the President was known to have had with some members of his government during the time of Watergate. The scene in the film, shows the flawed aspects of both men. In one scene, we see how the effects of an interview, can make and break the lives of both men. We witness the strain it has taken on both of them, and in that one moment, we can forget the battle of good versus bad, and appreciate the human aspects of the situation. That is a strong part of the story too... whether wrongly or rightly, both Morgan and Howard show Nixon as a man, rather than a scandal. And that it what this film is, it is a character study. A character study that uses an iconic moment in modern American history to maneuver around. Nobody can argue that it's not effective either!