Mrs. Iselin, The Manchurian Candidate: Even the most outlandish conservative caricature of Hillary Clinton can't touch Angela Lansbury's spousal puppetmaster, who pulls the strings for her Joe McCarthyesque senator husband in between trading tricks with the Red Chinese.
Gen. Midwinter, Billion Dollar Brain: Oscar-winning character actor Ed Begley is a force of nature, and here delivers a performance so over-the-top you wouldn't believe it even to see it. In the third of Michael Caine's Harry Palmer spy movies, Begley's barking mad Texas oil baron lays out his plan to eradicate Communism using a Foghorn Leghorn accent, mucho crazy eyes and lines like, "I love my country, and my dream is to make the thing I love strong! Strong! Strong! Strong! Strong!"
Bob Roberts, Bob Roberts: Most lefty thesps like to play noble types (see Angelina Jolie as essentially herself in the stillborn U.N. peacekeeper saga Beyond Borders). Tim Robbins prefers to play his arch-nemeses, most famously as the gruesomely right-wing folk musician who runs for the Senate.
Sen. Kelly, X-Men: Thanks in part to openly gay director Bryan Singer, the X-Men movies don't skimp on the comics' themes of social ostracism, even summoning up a senator (Bruce Davison) who's part McCarthy, part Jesse Helms. Then again, even a raging bigot like Helms doesn't deserve Davison's fate: slowly mutating into a puddle of water.
Corrine Whitman, Rendition: Essentially reprising her Devil Wears Prada ice queen routine, Meryl Streep plays a pro-torture CIA exec so hissable and one-dimensionally loathsome it's possible deleted scenes will have her clubbing baby seals and kicking old ladies in the shins.
Sen. Jasper Irving, Lions for Lambs: On paper Irving is pure parody: every evil conservative trait rolled into one thoroughly unbelievable creation. As played by eternal pretty boy Tom Cruise--a good actor, it's worth remembering--he's uncannily real.
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