The Headliner

The Campaign

Just in time for Election Day, here's your chance to watch the Will Ferrell–Zach Galifianakis satire The Campaign in the comfort of your home — the very place where you may have already planned to spend the weekend pondering your political options! To be honest, "satire" is a pretty strong word for The Campaign: Though there is some pretty savage stuff in there about the Koch brothers (extremely thinly veiled versions of whom are played here by Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow, using their money to influence the titular campaign), most of what happens is pure silliness.

Though I wouldn't put The Campaign in the top tier of Will Ferrell movies, it's a serviceable entry at the level of, let's say, Talladega Nights. What put it over for me was Galifianakis's performance as Marty Huggins, a local boob thrown into the political arena by the wealthy, connected father he's pitifully desperate to please. Marty is basically a sweet idiot who's woefully ill-equipped to handle the effects that a brutal campaign will have on his personal life; if we didn't have the naive Marty to root for, The Campaign might be unwatchable for being too depressingly real.

The Odd Life of Timothy Green (August 15)

[Note to readers: If you can't see the trailers, try a different browser. We didn't forget to include them, we promise.]
Silver: I welcome The Odd Life of Timothy Green to the list of films that are sure to make me cry. You might look at this trailer and feel the film will be nothing more than sentimental foolishness. But then you’d be a person who has an empty chasm in his chest, right in the place a heart should be.