Bulworth

Cinephiles lost their minds when one of Barack Obama’s aides leaked word to the press about the 44th’s president fantasizing about “going Bulworth,” referring to Warren Beatty’s vanity project about a senator who takes out a hit contract on himself and suddenly finds the courage to call it like he sees it—disastrous political consequences be damned. The film is a ripe artifact of self-loathing among failed Clinton-era progressives, and an essential counter to the contemporaneous liberal self-congratulation of Aaron Sorkin; Beatty’s willingness to make a fool of himself forms a stark contrast with Dante Spinotti’s magisterial gold-embossed cinematography.