The Manchurian Candidate (2004) – 6.8

Jonathan Demme’s surprisingly entertaining remake of the 1962 classic.  Denzel Washington stars as the paranoid veteran Major Marco, who becomes convinced that he and his Gulf-War platoon-mates were kidnapped and brainwashed by a sinister corporation bent on getting a sleeper agent elected to the White House.  The film succeeds in spite of a painfully earnest afterthought of an ending, largely by mixing suspense with twisted, tongue-in-cheek camp.  With Liev Schreiber as the automaton Presidential candidate Raymond Shaw and Meryl Streep as his bitchy mother.