Veep is an American political satire comedy series following Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and her team as they attempt to make their mark and leave a legacy but often instead become mired in day-to-day political games. "Politics is about people," former Sen. Meyer is fond of saying. Unfortunately, the people Meyer, a charismatic leader and rising star in her party, meets after becoming vice president are nothing like she expected, but everything she was warned about.
Orson Welles once said that directing a movie was like playing with the greatest toy train set in the world, and Tony Scott seems to be taking him literally. With the caboose of Scott's Taking of Pelham 123 barely in the distance, the filmmaker turned to Unstoppable, a train-chase picture loosely inspired by a true story (and perhaps just a smidgen by Runaway Train, the 1985 film based on an Akira Kurosawa script). At a Pennsylvania rail yard, some clueless workers let an unmanned train get loose, and the thing is soon hurtling across the countryside.
As docudramas go, Jobs works better as a profile of an innovative company than of the demanding entrepreneur who cofounded it (Apple would have provided a more apt title). Director Joshua Michael Stern opens with the launch of the iPod, a notable development, but not an especially dramatic one, before backtracking to the college dropout days of the oft-barefoot Steve Jobs (Ashton Kutcher), who comes across as more of a ladies' man than a visionary.
It must be true that getting out of town can do a fellow a lot of good, because Vicky Cristina Barcelona is the best movie Woody Allen has made in years. Okay, you're right, 2006's Match Point already claimed that honor and, as Allen's first film made in England, established the virtues of getting away from overfamiliar territory (namely Manhattan). But the Woodman's first film made in Spain matches the ice-cold Match Point for crisp authority, and yields a good deal more sheer pleasure besides.
The gang that created Airplane and The Naked Gun sets its sights on Top Gun in this often hilarious spoof starring Charlie Sheen, who previously only inspired laughs with his personal life. He plays Topper Harley, a fighter pilot with an ax to grind: clearing the family name. He gets involved in a relationship with Valerie Golino, a woman with an unusually talented stomach. But his mission is to avenge his father. Lloyd Bridges, late in his career, revealed an aptitude for this kind of silliness, here as a commander who is both incredibly dim and delightfully accident prone.
