Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

invisibleunicornninja This movie is very entertaining and informative. If you are interested about the history of the news, then I recommend this movie. It is very interesting and well made.

popcorninhell If one were to look for a patient zero when it comes to the dawn of modern political punditry, it would likely be the 1968 Vidal vs. Buckley debate. Amid mounting Vietnam war protests, conflict within the civil rights movement, fractious inner-city turmoil and the shocking assassination of Robert Kennedy, the summer of 1968 was turning into what professionals would call "a real clusterf***k". Meanwhile the now institutional stalwart ABC News was trailing the other large networks in a quest for ratings. Due to budget restrictions, their network only had cursory coverage of the Democratic and Republican conventions taking place in Chicago and Miami respectively. So to fill time, the network hired conservative author and commentator William Buckley Jr. to give analysis and perspective to the political uncertainty of the time. When asked for suggestions on who would be his liberal counterpart he asked not to be sitting across a Communist or Gore Vidal; I suppose no Communist was available because guess who they hired?Best of Enemies analyzes the antagonistic relationship between Buckley and Vidal as they debate the issues of the day. The two trade barbs and vitriol each pretty much seeing everything wrong with society in the other. While Vidal caustically jabs Buckley's National Review magazine, Buckley continually refers to Vidal as "the author of Myra Breckinridge," Vidal's most controversial work. Despite making careers being on the opposite side of the political spectrum, both were at their heart, prep school dandies who spoke in paragraphs. Vigorous debaters till the bitter end of their confrontation, the event left indelible mark on the both of them and in the process left a mark on the country as a whole.There were ten debates in all, thus I'm sure the issues of the day were given their due in 1968 but the film all but ignores any semblance of context. There's no deeper gleaming of the existential milieu of the time. There's little reference to the major events that surrounded the conventions nor is there any real explanation about the mechanics behind the conventions themselves and why they're so interesting by today's standards. On there rare occasion we do get nuggets of information, they're told second hand by our two subjects who flippantly add their own two cents.Best of Enemies could have been a movie about how we view 20th century history and more importantly, how contemporaries thought about history as it was unfolding. Instead the makers of the film decided it'd be better to pick apart the psychology of the pundits and the ways they approached each other. Yet by narrowing the film's focus, we also narrow the film's impact. Why should an audience care about two blowhards when they should be caring about the impact these two blowhards had on their world? It also narrows the film's marketability which as it stands only services fans of Gore Vidal. A little more context, a little more information heck a little more nostalgia could have made this documentary transcendent.But fine, I suppose in good hands you could still flesh out a neat story from the film's odd couple. After all, co-director Morgan Neville did blow people away with 20 Feet from Stardom (2013), a documentary that similarly exposes the passions, frustrations and psychology behind backup singers. Unfortunately not even the voice-over work of John Lithgow and Kelsey Grammar could flesh out and humanize the pomposity in the room. By the time the film reaches it's "smoking gun" moment, all the venom, all the contempt and all the nastiness of the debates renders the film puckishly inconsequential. Despite most secondary interviewees concluding one side won over another; it's understood we've all lost in the end.Perhaps in a roundabout way, that was the point of Best of Enemies; the idea that our civil discourse corrodes our society's mores and makes us more inclined to speak instead of listen. Yet let's keep this in mind, Best of Enemies is a commentary on commentary, expanding on the confrontation between two commentators and using commentators to do so. It's like a Russian nesting doll of proto-reality TV hyperbole. Only it fails to truly plug itself in a context and ultimately lionizes one talking head over another. Thus this muckraking political documentary is just as unsatisfying as most.

MisterWhiplash Most people who come to Best of Enemies knows what the state of news media coverage is, especially in the realm of cable news. It's been bad for a long time (there's a very brief excerpt of the time when Jon Stewart called out Crossfire for the very problems that can be seem sprouting up in the film in the end credits). But what's so great about Best of Enemies is how you see that the groundwork laid at the beginning for what's been twisted into the barking (less talking) heads in coverage of the daily events (let alone political conventions) is seen as relatively cordial and sophisticated. Sure, William F. Buckley Jr and Gore Vidal might not be everyone's idea of a good time with a glass of beer (though that depends on what class system rank you're in), but, perhaps except for one major outburst from Buckley - which haunted him for years (or he just became obsessed with it like a cry-baby, you decide) - they were so evenly matched as far as their scope of intellectual prowess that it boggles the mind.Over the course of Best of Enemies we get to see what these two men were like, before the debates in 1968 and then after, and there's this monumental point of view (probably totally correct) that the directors give which is that TV changed things for the public so much that two people arguing about this or that could change things, like concretely in people's minds. But past it being of interest in a sociological or political science interest is the emphasis that these two men *really* did not like one another. Perhaps there was some unspoken level of respect, that sort of look of 'hey, let's give them a show' (and apparently after one of the tenser debates, Buckley leaned over and almost paid a compliment that that's what they did). But watching the scenes here I can't imagine anyone walking away thinking it was just an act, and yet at the same time I think there was an element of the theatrical; one of the revelations is that Vidal tested some of his retorts to Buckley on staffers or crew before filming.The documentary may be borderline on too much context in a way - the talking heads from (the late) Christopher Hitchens and Dick Cavett and Buckley's biographer shine some light on certain aspects of their personalities (how personally Buckley took things, and how Vidal kept things under lock and key what he showed on his face). It can even be said there isn't quite enough of the debates in the film, and that's the one thing keeping it from being a 10 out of 10. But sometimes the best movies are never long enough, and this is a case where I could watch another 30 to 60 minutes of this story, especially as it's set in the tumultuous time of 1968 at Republican and Democratic conventions (the latter being when Chicago went into a series of riots). As long as the filmmakers keep the focus on these two men looking at each other and sniping in sardonic and totally dead-serious ways, the film works wonders. And you also get thrown into the mood of the period through music that almost has the buzz of technology, of TV electronic-waves and such.If the medium is/was the message, then having two men argue at a time when there were only three channels with ABC hosting it had to do something different to compete with Cronkite and the like (and as one person says in the doc, argument is sugar ans we are the flies) made the message clear: conflict and drama makes for much more enticing (and perhaps simply easier) viewing than watching straight, down-the-middle factual news reporting. Who needs the facts when you got the paragon of the Conservative right (Buckley, by the way, has that sort of smile and grin that is both charming and kind of creepy) and of the intellectual, hardcore left (Vidal, with his books making him like an unofficial if sometimes controversial arbiter of history). Check it out - and ponder if either of these men could last a minute on Fox news or even CNN.

Paul Allaer "Best of Enemies" (2015 release; 88 min.) is a documentary about the infamous 10 televised debates that took place during the 1968 Republican and Democratic Presidential Conventions (in Miami and Chicago, respectively), between conservative William Buckley Jr. and liberal Gore Vidal. As the documentary opens, Vidal is commentating about old pictures hanging up in his house and one of them is showing Buckley and Vidal at one of those debates. We then get some background as to who these 2 guys are, and why ABC veered away to bring the "unconventional Convention" coverage. And then we get to the first debate... To tell you more would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.Couple of comments: this documentary is co-directed by Morgan "20 Feet From Stardom" Neville and Robert Gordon, who is affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank. If you think that means the documentary is kinder to Buckley that to Vidal, think again. The two men are pitted against each other, and vehemently disdain each other, even before these debates, and much more so afterwards. "It was a confrontation of life styles", as someone comments. Yes, it was, but as it turns out, these debates had another unexpected consequence: ABC's ratings went through the roof, and the other mainstream networks quickly realized they had to have their own versions of these "point-counterpoint" programs. In other words, the Buckley-Vidal debates set into motion what would eventually become the Fox's and MSNBC's news channels. Apart from the historical legacy created by these debates, the documentary also examines the long shadows cast be the debates over the personal lives of both Vidal and (even more so) Buckley. If you have any interest in politics and/or in TV history, you will not want to miss this documentary. It makes for completing viewing, period."Best of Enemies" made quite a splash at the Sundance film festival earlier this year. The movie's been out for months and I didn't think it would reach theaters here in Cincinnati, but then out of the blue t showed up this weekend at my local art-house theater here. I figured this would not be playing very long and went to see it right away, The matinée screening where I saw this at turned into a private screening, as in: I literally was the only person in the theater. A shame, as this is a riveting documentary. If you get the chance to see this, be it in the theater, on VOD or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray, do not mist it! "BEst of Enemies" is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!