Cast Your Vote For Alexander Payne's Best Move, Election

Matthew Broderick is an actor of stage and screen known for playing nice protagonists that your average moviegoer can easily root for. It's a trait of his that worked so well in Ferris Bueller's Day Off that people are still wearing "Save Ferris" T-Shirts all these years lost while the likes of The Lion King and Torch Song Trilogy also made strong use of his endearing nature. Yes, Broderick is talented at playing likable individuals but as Jimmy Stewart showed multiple times in his career, sometimes there's nothing more fun to watch than actors known for playing nice people going full-on creepy asshole. Broderick got to flex those kinds of antagonistic muscles with Alexander Payne's 1999 motion picture Election.

Downsizing Is Small On Narrative Ambitions Or Anything Really Remarkable To Speak Of

There's not much going on here in Downsizing. Despite labeling itself a "social satire", there's not much in the way of actual satire transpiring in Alexander Payne's latest motion picture. There isn't all that much comedy either and what does show up to generate yuks is just awkward and forced (the majority of the jokes received, from the audience at my screening, the kind of forced light chuckles a parent might use to laugh at a young child's incoherent knock-knock joke). So what is there in this movie, what exactly is going on in Downsizing? There's...a chance for Christoph Waltz to play someone that isn't a bad guy in an American movie? That's good! OK, that's one thing that happens in Downsizing...