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Vice (2018)
7.2/10on IMDb
Released
Adam McKay tells the career of Dick Cheney, from Wyoming drop-out to a vice president often called the most powerful in American history, as a sardonic lecture with fake end credits, a Shakespearean bedroom scene and a narrator whose connection to Cheney is the final joke. Christian Bale disappears into the role; the film won the Oscar for makeup.
The target is the quiet accumulation of executive power and the theory that justified it. Its style is loud and its sympathies are plain, which some viewers find preachy. A working memory of the Bush years and the Iraq War is close to essential.
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Jojo Rabbit (2019)
7.9/10on IMDb
Released
A ten-year-old in the Hitler Youth has an imaginary friend who happens to be Adolf Hitler, played by Taika Waititi as a petulant, needy clown, until he discovers that his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in the attic. The target is how a regime recruits children, through games, uniforms and belonging.
Its sweetness divides people: some find it the gentlest way into the subject, others think it softens it too much. Waititi won the Oscar for adapted screenplay. A good choice for older teenagers, and the one entry here built around a child's view of power.
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Don't Look Up (2021)
7.1/10on IMDb
Released
Two astronomers find a comet heading for Earth and discover that the White House, the morning shows and a tech billionaire all have better uses for it than survival. Adam McKay's film was made as a climate-change allegory, and Meryl Streep's president and Mark Rylance's mumbling tycoon are the sharpest caricatures.
Released on Netflix in December 2021, it became one of the most argued-about films of that year: too blunt for some, exactly right for others. Long, starry and broad, it is the most accessible entry for viewers who have never sought out satire.
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Rumours (2024)
4.8/10on IMDb
Released
The leaders of the G7 meet at a German castle to draft a joint statement on an unnamed crisis, find that their staff have vanished, and wander into a forest of bog corpses and giant glowing brains while still arguing over wording. Cate Blanchett plays the German chancellor and host, Charles Dance a sleepy American president.
Guy Maddin and Evan and Galen Johnson made it, and their style is closer to midnight B-movie than West Wing. The target is summit diplomacy that produces communiqués instead of action. Critics split over whether the satire is sharp or thin; anyone who has sat through a drafting session will laugh first and decide later.
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Mountainhead (2025)
5.4/10on IMDb
Released
Four tech billionaires gather at a snowbound Utah mansion for a poker weekend while a social app owned by one of them spreads AI-made fakes and sets off violence around the world. Rather than fix it, they start discussing which governments they might take over. Jesse Armstrong, the creator of Succession, wrote and directed this feature for HBO.
Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Ramy Youssef and Cory Michael Smith play men whose jargon runs ahead of their consciences. The target is the new oligarchy that sits beside, and sometimes above, elected power. Stagey and talky, and best for viewers who enjoyed Succession's insults.
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Eddington (2025)
6.6/10on IMDb
Released
In May 2020, the sheriff of a small New Mexico town, played by Joaquin Phoenix, picks a fight over masks with the mayor, Pedro Pascal, and decides to run against him. Within weeks the town is full of conspiracy videos, protest slogans and a tech company's data centre, and everyone is filming everyone else.
Ari Aster's film satirises the pandemic summer's politics from every side, which is why it frustrates some viewers. The first half is the sharpest comedy, while the later stretches turn violent and strange. It needs no background beyond having lived through 2020.
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