Just before the 2004 election, Eminem released a highly-touted animated video for "Mosh" in an effort to encourage young voters to oust Dubya in favor of John Kerry. Suffice it to say, it didn’t exactly galvanize the masses. Released in mid-October for similar purposes, Oliver Stone’s W. didn’t capture the left-wing zeitgeist either; Obama’s rout was practically inevitable by then anyway. Yet the film ismuch more than the extended SNL sketch critics dismissed it as. Josh Brolin inhabits the Commander-in-Chief with panache and charisma in an award-worthy performance, and Bush’s cabinet is also expertly played by the likes of Thandie Newton (Condi Rice), Jeffrey Wright (Colin Powell) and Scott Glenn (Donald Rumsfeld). Interestingly, most viewers groused that the notoriously liberal Stone treated Bush too fairly by omitting 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. Personally, we dug the surreal depiction of his drunken early days and sudden transition to composed Christianity.
