Irresistible – Movie Review

TL;DR – Based on some strong character work, Irresistible is a riot of laughs from start to finish, but it still has something important it wants to say.     

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid and end-credit scene

Irresistible. Image Credit: Universal Pictures.

Irresistible Review

It is rare for a film to catch me completely off guard these days. In the era of trailers giving most of the game away and the pretty standard plot structure that most films follow, you tend to know what you are getting yourself into before you sit down in the theatre. Well, today, I look at a movie that surprised me from the start and never let up.

So to set the scene, we open on the night before the 2016 Presidential elections where Democratic party representative Gary Zimmer (Steve Carell) and his Republican counterpart Faith Brewster (Rose Byrne) are giving their final pitches to the nation in the ‘spin room’. Well, we all know how that election turned out, and much like the literal depiction of a cannonball to the gut Gary is in a state of despair. However, a couple of years later as mid-terms approach he is trying to find a way to reconnect with heartland voters when he stumbles across a viral video of Colonel Jack Hastings (Chris Cooper) in Deerlaken, Minnesota. Jack is standing up to the local Mayor Braun (Brent Sexton) over his stance on immigration. Gary has found his gateway to the heartland and flies to Minnesota and agrees to run Jack’s campaign for Mayor.

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Article – Why Voting Systems Matter

TL;DR– When everything is even what system you use to tabulate the votes will have a marked change on the outcome.

Article

Throughout the year in my other job I have been teaching classes on Political Science, specifically Australian Political Institutions. On the week where we discussed voting systems one of the things that we mention is that how you chose to formulate your electoral systems can have dramatic impacts on the outcome of elections i.e. who gets what seats in parliament. However, while this was clear I didn’t have a good example to show. Well, I had some free time at the end of the year and this question had been bugging me so I decided to work through the data myself to see if there was such a big difference and it does, boy does it ever. Now, for those who are not familiar with Australian Politics, we have presented a little primer next, as well as a general overview of the project, but if you are familiar you can skip down to the data below. 

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