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Harrison Ford in Air Force One, Meryl Streep in Don't Look Up and Jack Nicholson in Mars Attacks! are just some of the many screen American presidents. Photo: Screenshot / Supplied It's not even a New Zealand election, but we get it. You're stressed out. America will choose its next president on Wednesday NZ Time, deciding between former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris. You really can't scroll through campaign news non-stop without breaking your brain, but you're still in a mood to watch something political. The presidency has been the subject of countless movies, good and bad, from lofty biopics to action-packed romps. Here are 15 movies about American presidents and politics that are worth firing up to divert your brain for a few hours as Election Day approaches...

Opinion polls show the pair are locked in a tight race. Photo: AFP By Nandita Bose and Steve Holland, Reuters Democrat Kamala Harris made her closing pitch for the US presidency at a historically Black church and to Arab Americans in battleground Michigan on Sunday, while her Republican rival Donald Trump embraced violent rhetoric at a rally in Pennsylvania. Opinion polls show the pair locked in a tight race, with Vice President Harris, 60, bolstered by strong support among female voters while former President Trump, 78, gains ground with Hispanic voters, especially men. Voters overall view both candidates unfavourably, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling, but that has not dissuaded them from casting ballots. More than 78 million Americans have already done so ahead of Tuesday's Election...

Ukrainian servicemen of the 24th Mechanized Brigade fire a BRM1k infantry fighting vehicle towards Russian positions in Donetsk in August, 2024. Photo: AFP / Press Service of the 24th Mechanized Brigade of Ukrainian Armed Forces Ukraine's army chief has warned that his forces are facing "one of the most powerful Russian offensives" since the start of the war as Russia claimed it captured more settlements on the eastern frontline. Russia has steadily been making gains in the eastern Donbas region, which Russia's President Vladimir Putin aims to capture in full. Reuters, citing open-source data, reported that Russia has been advancing at its fastest pace in at least a year. Ukraine's Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said the situation on the front line "remains difficult" and certain ...

By Aurélia End, AFP In an ad for Kamala Harris, a woman marks her ballot for the Democratic candidate while her husband thinks she's voting for Republican Donald Trump: "What happens in the booth, stays in the booth" a voiceover says. The 30-second-clip, narrated by actor Julia Roberts, shows the couple arriving at a polling station wearing baseball caps featuring the American flag, a symbol often sported by Trump supporters. The ad, financed by a religious nonprofit, has elicited fury in the Trump camp, with the former president calling it "stupid" and asking "Can you imagine a wife not telling her husband who she's voting for?" In the ad, the wife exchanges knowing glances with another female voter, before filling in her choice for Harris. "You can vote any way you want, and no one wil...

Quincy Jones in 2019. Photo: AFP / Arnold Turner Quincy Jones, the man known simply as "Q," was a huge influence on American music in his work with artists ranging from Count Basie to Frank Sinatra and reshaped pop music in his collaborations Michael Jackson. Jones died on Sunday at the age of 91, his publicist said. There was very little Jones did not do in a music career of more than 65 years. He was a trumpeter, bandleader, arranger, composer, producer and winner of 27 Grammy Awards. A studio workaholic and a virtuoso at handling delicate egos, he shaped recordings by jazz greats such as Miles Davis, produced Sinatra, and put together the superstar ensemble that recorded the 1985 fund-raiser 'We Are the World', the biggest hit song of its time. Jones also was a prolific writer of mov...

A female student stripped to her underwear outside her university in Iran in what some student and rights groups say was a protest against the country's strict Islamic dress code. A video circulating on social media and shared by rights group Amnesty International shows the woman sitting outside the university in her underwear and with her hair uncovered. She gestures toward her fellow students, many of whom are female and wearing headscarves, before strolling around the premises. Another video shows her walking down a road, still in a state of undress, before a group of men surround her, bundle her into a car, and drive away. Amnesty said Saturday (local time) the woman had been "violently arrested" after she protested the "abusive enforcement" of the dress code at Tehran's Islamic Azad U...