Frost/Nixon (2008) (Blu Ray) - 9/10

Frost/Nixon is a lot more entertaining than it should be thanks to superb direction by Ron Howard and an excellent script by Peter Morgan. I obviously wasn't alive to watch the real life interview b/w David Frost and Richard Nixon but this movie really captures the surrounding events and people that led up to this historical event. What makes this compelling I think that really drew me in was this boxing match type of structure where we get to see the lives of both players and how different they truly are from one another. While Frost is a playboy and TV entertainer, Nixon is a confident and humble man who believes that what he did was right. Like so many other of Ron Howard's films, it's showing this false reality happening around this true life event so that we as an audience can understand all the research, pressure, and sacrifice Frost went through in order to prove everyone wrong and expose the truth.

With a great supporting cast of Oliver Platt, Kevin Bacon and Sam Rockwell, Frost/Nixon uses this type of archival interivew footage in retrospect to kind of show how people didn't believe this was going to work or that Frost wasn't the right man for the job. By cutting in between both groups of characters, we get this montage of research and information that builds up with such power that by the time the actual interviews happen, you can't help but be engaged. I literally watched this movie 3 times in a matter of days, once clean, once with the commentary by Howard, and another time with the behind the scenes Blu Ray picture and picture making of experience. And each time I gained a little bit more insight and understanding of why this story was so compelling to the filmmakers and I applaud their efforts to make this bland subject accessable. From actually filming on the Nixon estate to recreating birthday parties and hotel suites, they incorporate the real transcripts from the interviews into this movie editing magic to give it a life of it's own outside the play it was based on. After getting so into this, I literally started pulling out more of Ron Howards work just to listen to his commentaries. This definitely is a must see.