Election (1999)
Directed by Alexander Payne
A high school teacher meets his match in an over-achieving student politician.
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What critics compared Election to
As always, Payne explores the plight of the male in contemporary America with ease (as he has so effectively before, in Sideways, Election and Nebraska).
This is Payne’s most political film since Election…
While they’ve been brilliant before at incisively probing deeply flawed characters (Sideways) and dissecting microcosms of modern society (Election, pretty much a perfect movie), they can’t decide what to do with their characters here and find themselves stumped when exploring a literal microcosm of contemporary American life.
Payne’s early, acidic satires like “Citizen Ruth” and “Election” used to cut through this exact sort of self-congratulatory, limousine liberal BS.
His six previous films (Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, The Descendants, Nebraska) center around characters at a crossroads, American dreamers grabbing at intangibles.
Payne brings some of the bright, crisp satirical feel of his 1999 movie Election to these segments…
His sophomore effort, “Election,” and third film, “About Schmidt,” showed that the writer/director is far more than a one-shot wonder.
Alexander Payne, the director of Citizen Ruth, Election, and About Schmidt, has returned with his best film to date, Sideways, a brilliant revival of that most disreputable of genres, the buddy movie.
Sideways, directed by the incisive Alexander Payne (Election, Citizen Ruth), follows Miles and his old college buddy Jack (Thomas Haden Church), a has-been soap actor, on a week's vacation through the well-lit banality of California.
His follow-up, Election, was one of the darkest, most accurate and hysterical high school comedies ever made.
Now that Alexander Payne has made four films ("Citizen Ruth," "Election," "About Schmidt" and the new "Sideways") that have all been excellent, we can officially declare him one of the best directors currently working.
Whatever the case, after already lengthy careers, Paul Giamatti ( American Splendor ), Thomas Haden Church ( Tombstone ) and Virgina Madsen ( Crossfire Trail ) all give the best performances of their lives in Sideways, the new film from writer-director Alexander Payne and co-writer Jim Taylor, the team responsible for Election and About Schmidt .
In Election, he depicted Matthew Broderick’s descent into jealous madness, and in Sideways, he showed Giamatti’s character emerge from a deep depressive funk—but in both films, the transforma…
From high school elections ("Election"), the abortion debate ("Citizen Ruth"), or even wine tasting ("Sideways"), Payne has a way of finding humor and heart in everything he directs.
Payne’s films have always had a certain amount of heart to them, whether through the naivety of characters in Election or the stifled love in The Descendants, but The Holdovers manages to be Payne’s warmest film.
It’s also smart, like Payne’s masterful 1999 political satire Election.
Payne’s films, from Election to The Descendants, are always wry and darkly ironic, exposing the absurdity of everyday situations and real people trying to manage at difficult points in their lives.
I am reminded of Election (1999), a high-school comedy that mocked the values that Booksmart , for all its girl-centric appeal, does nothing to challenge.
Inside Booksmart ’s Type-A protagonist Molly (Beanie Feldstein) beats the savage heart of Election ’s Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon), while her dreamy, sensitive best friend Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) isn’t so far from Aldys (Leelee Sobieski), the tender weirdo from Never Been Kissed .
There are hints of undisputable inspiration in Gomez-Rejon's approachWes Anderson's " Rushmore " and Alexander Payne's " Election " come immediately to mind while watchingbut the filmmaker uses them merely as a jumping-off point for his own uniquely perceptive viewpoint.Greg Gaines (Thomas Mann) is a die-hard cinephile and aspiring director whose 42 home-made films (most of them affectionate movie spoofs) adorn his family's living-room shelves.
No messy massacres like the one in Gus Van Sant's Elephant or political backstabbing à la Alexander Payne's Election.
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The story of an illicit love affair that coincides with a presumed pedophile's move to town, "Little Children" is based on a book by Tom Perrotta, who wrote the novel "Election" (Alexander Payne's film was later based on it).
Pedigree: It's from Tom Perrotta, the writer of Election, and writer-director Todd Field (In the Bedroom).
Cowriter (with novelist Tom Perrotta, "Election")/director Todd Fields ("In the Bedroom") shifts from the murky blackness of the human heart exposed by grief that he explored "In the Bedroom" to the unfocused self-centeredness of unformed yuppies with every bit as keen an instinct for what makes people tick.
"Little Children" is far from a bad movie, but it's not as deep and subtly disturbing as Fields' " In the Bedroom " or as infernally funny as Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor's film adaptation of Perrotta's novel Election.
A good measuring stick would be Alexander Payne's Election (1999), which was also adapted from a novel by Tom Perotta and was a good deal tighter and more fearless; that movie sustained its biting humor, while Little Children can't quite decide on a tone.
Todd Field's second feature film, like his debut "In the Bedroom," is another adaptation, but this time, he collaborated with the novel's author Tom Perrotta ("Election"), which helps instill more overt humor into what is essentially a dark and quirky character drama.
During its snappy first hour, Brian Dannelly's black comedy "Saved!" is reminiscent of Alexander Payne's marvelous 1999 satire "Election" in its sharp, take-no-prisoners characterizations, smart dialogue and recognizably grungy high-school milieu.
Although Mean Girls is likely to be frequently compared to Heathers, and perhaps occasionally to Election , the movie it most strongly reminds me of is 1999's Jawbreaker .
So he set his aim higher, wanting to make a film with the kind of complex, seriocomic humanity he admired in Billy Wilder, Hal Ashby, James L. Brooks, and the contemporary director he most reveres, Alexander Payne ( Sideways , About Schmidt , Election ).
In particular, Anna Kendrick, who charmed in "Camp," enters a pantheon of smart young indie actresses with a breakout resembling Reese Witherspoon's in "Election."
Rolfe Kent (ah, the Alexander Payne connection!—for his scores on Sideways, About Schmidt, Election, and Citizen Ruth) does a masterfully complimentary score, with additional songs picked by music supervisor Randall Poster including Crosby, Stills & Nash and Charles Atlas.
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For Reese Witherspoon’s super-keen Tracy Flick, 17 is when she ran for the highest office in her suburban Omaha school-land in Election (1999).
The pair’s hookup seems inevitable from the get-go, the dynamics a too-tame version of the teen love triangle in 1999’s satirical Election.
Nothing close to, say, Reese Witherspoon in "Election."