Film Movement Movie Review: The Killing Floor (1984)

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An incisive fact-based chronicle of the first big attempt made by Chicago slaughterhouse workers to fight against workplace abuse by joining an interracial union — before the city erupted in chaos during the horrific race riots of 1919 — gifted actor turned director Bill Duke's The Killing Floor originally premiered on PBS network's acclaimed series "American Playhouse" in 1984.

Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (in addition to contributions by foundations, corporations, and unions from across the country), Floor was made three years after President Reagan made the shocking decision to fire eleven thousand striking members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization in 1981. The recipient of the Special Jury Award from the Sundance Film Festival, watching The Killing Floor now in 2020, I couldn't help but feel that Duke's searing work is even timelier today than it was in 1984. 

In a quietly powerful, moving, multilayered performance, Apocalypse Now and Death Wish actor Damien Leake steps into the role of young Mississippi sharecropper Frank Custer. And in his voice-over narration that opens the film and reoccurs throughout, we watch as Frank leaves his wife and children behind to try to find a better life for them all. Traveling along with his best friend and lifelong neighbor Thomas (Ernest Rayford), the two men make the journey to Chicago as just two of the tens of thousands of southern Black citizens who ventured north to where jobs were plentiful during the first world war.

Eager to find work in the industrialized "promised land" and then send for their loved ones to come and join them as well, the men report to the stockyard of one of the city's five huge meatpacking plants. No stranger to the work since — as Frank explains — he'd killed lots of hogs back in Mississippi, once he takes a position in the stockyard, it takes him a little while to realize why certain coworkers stick together in packs.

Witnessing the power of the unionized group in action as they stand tall to prevent one of their own from being fired — regardless of the land he emigrated from and the language that he speaks — it isn't until Frank attends his first meeting that he becomes inspired to join the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America Union. Yet while Frank initially flourishes, things don't work out the same way for Thomas. After getting badly beaten in the "the hide room" on his first day at the plant, Thomas decides to give up that pursuit, walk away from the racists who'd beaten him bloody, and enlist in the first world war instead. 

Featuring a dynamic cast of top-notch character actors including Alfre Woodard and Moses Gunn as well as Chicago theater veterans like Dennis Farina and John Mahoney, the film was given a full 4K DCP digital restoration by the UCLA Film and Television Archive in 2019 in honor of the one-hundredth anniversary of the Chicago race riots, which are depicted and covered in the movie. 

With so much going on right now regarding the incredibly important Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the gruesome murder of George Floyd as well as Trump's efforts to divide the populace with hate and misinformation — in a tactic that the meatpacking industry used to stop the unions in 1919 — there has never been a better time to watch this powerful film than right now.

Ending with a chilling coda that lets us know exactly what happened to all involved and also credits the heroic efforts of the laborers in the interracial union who paved the way for the union protection that the workers would receive in the 1930s, The Killing Floor is a truly compelling, blistering, and vital historical document. 

Heartbreaking when you consider that as the global war against Covid-19 rages on, workers in meatpacking plants are some of the hardest hit by the disease, the film — which was written by Leslie Lee and based on a story from producer Elsa Rassbach — makes me curious to learn more about the evolution of the industry's union over the last hundred years.

Although he was no stranger to directing TV by 1984, The Killing Floor takes Bill Duke's role as a future filmmaker to a whole new level and foreshadows his great work to come as he gives voice to people who are normally overlooked onscreen. From his commitment to the period and ability to transform what in someone else's hands might have been too stagy given the film's limited budget and sets, etc., Floor crystallizes Duke's greatest strength. Namely, as an actor himself, he knows precisely how to get the performances he needs out of his talented cast to make his character-driven humanistic work connect with his audience. The end result of his efforts is a film you cannot miss. Powerful, hard-hitting, but still exceptionally and tenderly crafted, UCLA's lustrous new restoration of The Killing Floor premieres in virtual cinemas this weekend, courtesy of Film Movement. 

Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Movie Review: Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound (2019)

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Looking for the right words to describe the late Alan Splet, David Lynch's innovative, Academy Award winning sound editor who collaborated with the filmmaker on some of his most iconic works including Eraserhead and Blue Velvet, Lynch barely hesitated. Dubbing Splet "a born soundman," he elaborated further, describing his friend, with a twinkle in his eye, as a "joyous experimenter."

And joyous experimentation seems to be at the heart of veteran sound editor turned USC professor turned director Midge Costin's newly released documentary feature debut Making Waves, which celebrates the adventurous spirit of professionals eager to contribute to what Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas agree is fifty percent of a feature film.

Chronicling the history of motion picture sound from the beginning, in Waves, we learn about the artists who performed music and sound effects live to accompany screenings of the Oscar winning 1927 silent film Wings to the advent of the talkie with The Jazz Singer that same year. From King Kong setting the bar for future sound design in 1933, we move from Orson Welles bringing the methods he pioneered on radio to his influential Citizen Kane and beyond, until later on when we circle back to Jack Foley working his magic on 1960's Spartacus in order to save Stanley Kubrick a fortune in reshoots.

With three decades of experience working in the industry on films such as Days of Thunder and Crimson Tide at her disposal, Costin's passion for and knowledge of her subject shines through in this ambitious, eye-opening documentary, which is sure to be of particular interest to both budding and established cinephiles.

Occasionally too ambitious for its 94 minute format, while rushing from one thrilling anecdote about recording the sound of animal roars in order to beef up the otherwise "wimpy" sound of jets for Top Gun to recounting what it was like to re-record "there's no crying in baseball," with the actors live for A League of Their Own, Waves struggles to cover too much ground.

At its most engrossing when it slows down enough to really sink its teeth into a topic, Costin's segments on Splet-like "born soundmen," Walter Murch and Ben Burtt — both of whom fell in love with the medium playing with tape recorders as children before ultimately making their own groundbreaking contributions to the field on Apocalypse Now and Star Wars respectively — stand out.

An MVP in any documentary (and richly deserving of his own), from his philosophical analysis about sound's importance going back to the womb when it was the first sense we could experience up through his revolutionary decision to treat each facet of sound design like a different instrument family in a symphony, the sophisticated Murch easily holds us in his thrall. And with Burtt revealing his painstaking process of eagerly cataloging a wide variety of sounds for George Lucas a year before a single frame of Star Wars was even shot in order to give life to Chewbacca and R2-D2, Waves illustrates how well sound can translate emotion to audiences around the world.

Not just a boys club despite its reputation — as a female sound professional herself now heading up a largely female production and post-production crew — Costin makes an effort to champion the vital contributions made by the industry's unheralded soundwomen in Waves. While many of the contemporary examples fly by the screen far too quickly, one of the most interesting sequences in the film is devoted to the little known role that Barbra Streisand played in bridging the divide between concerts and film.

Longing to bring to the screen the same interplay between the artist and the audience that could be experienced at one of her shows, Streisand not only rejected the use of tape playback in Funny Girl in order to sing live but also insisted upon using what was then a relatively new, two-speaker, Dolby sound format for A Star is Born. Offering to pay for the expensive, untested technology out of her own pocket — which would have amounted to a million dollars — when Warner Brothers studio heads saw the film played back in Dolby, they heard the difference immediately and reassured her that there was no need for her to foot the bill.

Featuring interview footage with filmmakers ranging from Ang Lee and Robert Redford to Sofia Coppola and Ryan Coogler as well as the expertise of a wide variety of sound designers and editors, once we reach the film's blink-and-you-missed-it section on composers, it feels as though most of the contemporary segments in Making Waves have gone by in a blur.

With so much to cover in all of the various subcategories of sound, Costin could have easily turned the documentary feature into a Ken Burns style documentary miniseries (which she could have also shown to her students at USC!). Though it's filled with amazing moments that play like an epic awards show montage, at times, the film flies by so quickly and with so much force that it feels like a Top Gun jet, complete with an animal roar added in by Oscar nominee — and Costin's Days of Thunder colleague — Cece Hall.

Although I would surely fail if I were to be tested on how much information presented to us in the rapid fire last third of the film I was able to retain, honestly the lovingly made Waves is filled with so many wondrous ideas that it makes Costin's film an undeniable success.

"Our ears lead our eyes to where the story lives," Steven Spielberg explains early into the documentary and even though it's meant to highlight the importance of the art form, it also stands out as a perfect descriptor of Waves, which makes us appreciate the role that sound plays on a number of levels evidenced therein.

Celebrating the link between what we hear and what we feel, Making Waves is as informative as it is indefatigable, despite its structural flaws. A passionate ode to creativity, Midge Costin's documentary might just inspire the next generation of would-be sound artists to do some joyous experimentation — the kind we'll have to hear to believe — of their own.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Movie Review – CinemAbility: The Art of Inclusion

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From the saintly, asexual disabled women who get rewarded with a medical cure by the end of the movie (as in City Lights) to the vengeful, recently disabled, villainous men who want to take their anger out on the world (like Dennis Hopper's cop turned bus bomber in Speed), disability stereotypes have become ingrained in our culture throughout film history.

And while that doesn't of course prevent any of the films mentioned from being classics in their own right, when these and other stereotypes – whether coded or more overt – are returned to again and again on the big or small screen, the idea that they're true gets reinforced in people's minds, even if the viewer isn't fully aware of it.

A subject close to my heart, not only as a disabled woman but also as a film major who intended to make it my thesis in graduate school, in this eye-opening documentary (which should be mandatory viewing for those pursuing a degree in Media Studies), director Jenni Gold gives a fascinating overview of the subject of disability onscreen.

Chronicling the evolution of disabled character driven storytelling over roughly 120 years of cinema (and later, television), we discover how much has changed as well as how much remains the same. Additionally, Gold looks at the role that representation plays in legislation as – with the increase of more positive and diverse portrayals post-Vietnam – the Americans With Disabilities Act was finally signed into law by President Bush in 1990.

Reminiscent of a terrific small screen documentary that wouldn't be out of place on TCM, given not only its subject matter but also its slightly retro approach, CinemAbility: The Art of Inclusion is hosted and narrated by one of the film's producers, Jane Seymour and features interviews with a number of famous faces such as Geena Davis, Ben Affleck, Jamie Foxx, and William H. Macy.

Boasting a fascinating selection of film clips and some great analysis by Martin F. Norden, the author of a book I'd highly recommend on the subject (The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in the Movies), the Emmy winning Gold covers a lot of ground, especially in CinemAbility's powerful look at pre-World War II cinema.

From Thomas Edison's The Fake Beggar (which Eddie Murphy paid homage to in Trading Places) and Tod Browning's ouevre from his campy Lon Chaney collaborations to Freaks as well as the complex Golden Rule coded metaphorical morality of Frankenstein up through The Wizard of Oz, there's a lot to process.

And much like the strides made in portrayals post Vietnam, we received what is perhaps our earliest fully three-dimensional disabled character in the form of a WWII vet (played by real WWII vet Harold Russell) in director William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives.

Receiving both an honorary Oscar "for bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans" as well as a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for the role, Russell's earnest portrayal in the film (which is not without some controversy given Wyler's decision to limit Russell's offscreen independence onscreen) helped usher in decades of new disabled characters on screens both big and small.

From The Miracle Worker to Wait Until Dark at the movies as well as Miss Susan and Ironside on television, viewers were finally starting to see characters whose disabilities were just one aspect of who they were vs. their sole definition in the '50s and '60s.

And although Russell's Oscar success might've also inadvertently led to the ongoing debate surrounding disabled characters being especially attractive for able-bodied actors to play due to their awards bait potential (considering how many bring home Oscars in films from Coming Home to Ray), it still remains that exceptionally rare instance when a disabled actor was cast in a disabled part.

However, there is a heartbreaking follow-up to the universal acclaim for Russell when Marlee Matlin's well-deserved Academy Award win for her powerful turn in Children of a Lesser God was dismissed in the press in 1987 as “a sympathy vote.” Adding insult to injury, when she worked hard to speak the names of the Best Actor nominees the following year while presenting the award to its ultimate winner Michael Douglas, she was accused of betraying the deaf community.

While the sympathy vote write-off is perhaps indicative of a gender double standard, this isn't explored in the film, which already has so much to cover given the complexity, intertextuality, and intersectionality of its subject that it could've led to a multi-part Ken Burns style documentary series.

And with so much on its mind from not only the depiction of disabled characters on film and TV as well as by disabled performers – before delving into the need for more opportunities behind the scenes as well as working in civil rights issues and comparisons to the strides made by African-Americans and the LGBTQ community – the otherwise outstanding doc begins to lose focus.

Jumping around in topic and tone in its last half hour, CinemAbility's talking heads discuss various aspects of on and offscreen portrayals and their reactions to everything from Million Dollar Baby to the depiction of disability based humor.

Needless to say, this doesn't flow very well and while it's all very interesting, the meandering final section of the documentary isn't nearly as solid as the stellar, film school worthy tour of disability onscreen in the first half of the twentieth century which opened Gold's work.

Ambitious, necessary, and long overdue in our cultural conversation, in the end, having too much to say is always preferable to too little. However, because of the limited format of a feature length film (as opposed to say, a five part series on issues such as: stereotypes and depictions, genre approaches, approaching role as an actor, TV vs film, and inclusion in the industry), I think Gold's subject is better served with more analysis and cinematic examples than occasionally repetitive opinions from the interviewees.

Yet, despite that, by covering so much territory, it's bound to not only inspire vital post-film discussion but also cause viewers – both disabled and able-bodied alike – to consider some of their favorite films in a new light.

A crucial jumping off point to greater study, CinemAbility is a fast-moving, funny, and frequently surprising documentary that illustrates in both its examples and interviews, how much our culture benefits when we see people from all different walks of life represented onscreen, including those that might not walk but don't have to be psychopaths, helpless, or superheroes to be fascinating in their own right.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Movie Review: Lizzie (2018)

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More than just the brutality of the crime – the double murder of her father and stepmother with an axe – or the socioeconomics and the setting and the fact that it shocked New England high society in 1892, the reason that the Lizzie Borden saga has captured our attention for over a century is the exact same reason that she was acquitted of the crime.

Namely, because – whether back then to an all-male jury or even today given the gender of most killers we see on the news – it’s damn near impossible to compute how a girl could evolve from "sugar and spice and everything nice" to "Lizzie Borden took an axe." Yes, even nursery rhymes couldn't resist an homage to Borden's "forty whacks."

A longtime passion project of producer and star Chloë Sevigny, this daring feminist retelling of one of America’s most notorious murder mysteries sets out to answer those questions and also capture, as producer Liz Destro reveals, "the loneliness of being an educated and ambitious woman at the time."

Working in a number of theories from a wealth of Borden biographies Sevigny gave her screenwriter friend Bryce Kass as well as details gleaned in a visit to Borden's home and community of Fall River, Massachusetts to lure him aboard the project, the subsequent film from The Boy helmer Craig William Macneill manages to do the same.

With cinematographer Noah Greenberg's "slow, creeping zooms that create a sense of claustrophobia" captured on vintage lenses that give even the darkest of subject matter an intentionally softer, John Singer Sargent-esque painterly feel, we feel as though we've stepped back in time and into Lizzie's shoes.

Purposely framing characters off to the side and taking the corners tighter voyeuristically, in the words of Greenberg, "as the camera follows Lizzie throughout the house," we get the impression that the walls are closing in on Borden to the point that even when the most likely undiagnosed epileptic woman isn't having an attack, it feels like she could at any moment.

Reminiscent of the way that as Chloë Sevigny notes "women of the time...were virtual prisoners in their homes," under what she reinforces and the film implies through the characters of Lizzie's domineering father and uncle as "patriarchal rule," for Lizzie Borden, "the only way to get out of that house was marriage or death."

Deemed an old maid at age thirty-two (similar to her older sister Emma, played by Kim Dickens), when the headstrong Lizzie manages to twist her strict father's arm long enough, an occasional evening out at the local theater has become her one reprieve, even though it's frowned upon in society to go out unaccompanied.

A lonely outcast who spends the rest of her time with her birds, reading, or reading to her birds, Lizzie gets a friend where she least expects it with the arrival of Bridget Sullivan, a young housemaid played by Kristen Stewart.

Cutting right through their differences in class or status, the women only grow closer as they feel the metaphorical noose tighten around their necks in a house run with fear and abuse by Andrew Borden (Jamey Sheridan).

And while both actresses are outstanding, without the benefit of much dialogue or a character nearly as well-documented as Sevigny's nonetheless richly complex Lizzie, in the hands of another, the subservient Bridget could've easily been overpowered by Sevigny.

Yet, creating a fully realized individual, Stewart – incidentally the first person they imagined in the role – turns in one of her strongest recent performances as the housemaid whose relationship with Lizzie surprises them both when it turns romantic.

From anonymous threatening notes to a shady uncle, although red herrings abound as we lead up to the double murder and Macneill and Kass throw the audience a few curve balls in various subplots (including some that either feel contrived or don't go anywhere), Lizzie isn't afraid to take an absolute stance on the crime itself.

Leaving ambiguity in the past, in a bravado sequence that not only commands the viewer's attention but is also worthy of greater feminist analysis, the film – which opened with the discovery of the crime before backtracking six months – dares to go back in time once again after Lizzie's arrest, wherein we see the way the murders were carried out within this particular version of the tale.

A jaw-dropping finale, unfortunately, despite the high caliber performances and gorgeous cinematography, Lizzie stumbles greatly in its pacing. Succeeding a little too well in establishing Borden's home as an intellect draining prison, needless to say that for a movie about a legendary suspected axe murderer, it's a bad sign when the only one hundred and five minute film nearly put this viewer to sleep twice.

In a missed opportunity to augment its thesis even more, aside from a few cursory scenes, Lizzie largely overlooks the points-of-view of the other women in the house from Lizzie's stepmother Abby (played by Fiona Shaw) to her sister Emma which could've helped inject the already feminist work with even greater understanding of what it was like for women in the era, beyond Lizzie and Bridget.

All the same, anchored by its cast and first rate technical specs (including top notch production design which believably swapped out Massachusetts for its Savannah, Georgia location shoot), this ambitiously made, surprisingly empathetic passion project takes a literal and figurative axe to the Victorian period. I only wish it would've either done the same to the running time or spent a little more time trying to give Lizzie more life.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Movie Review: RBG (2018)

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Like many women who went to college in the 1950, Ruth Bader earned her Mrs. Degree when she married Martin Ginsburg – a man who was as outgoing as she was reserved.

Except, as she tells directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West in the inspiring new biographical documentary RBG, the only difference was, whereas other women suppressed their intelligence to fit in at Cornell, Marty not only cared that she had a brain but without her beloved husband, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg might have never become a lawyer.

Further inspired to enter the law after watching the McCarthy hearings on TV – Cohen and West's newly released film chronicles their modest subject's meteoric rise from her early days as one of only nine women admitted to Harvard Law School to her now iconic role on the Supreme Court.

Particularly fascinating in its pre-Justice period, RBG acquaints us with Harvard in an era where the dean asked its female students why they should get to take a man's "spot," before letting us share in Bader Ginsburg's success making the Law Review in her second year, while also caring for not only her toddler but also Marty, who'd been diagnosed with cancer early into their marriage.

Finishing her own work and then typing up her husband's while he underwent chemo, we discover that Ruth Bader Ginsburg's legendarily tireless work ethic of staying up until the wee small hours of the morning (and then sleeping all weekend) began in college. And while it has continued to serve her well today, most viewers question how a mere mortal can do what she's done day in and day out for over sixty years!

Though mere mortal she may not be. Described as "the closest thing to a superhero that I know," by interviewee Gloria Steinem, the film offers a fascinating to look back at some of the landmark equal rights cases that Bader Ginsburg argued in the 1970s Supreme Court, which not only made her name but also gave us some of the rights that we're fighting to hold onto today.

Also documenting Marty's work behind-the-scenes petitioning then President Bill Clinton to name RBG to the court (which he realized he wanted to do within fifteen minutes of meeting her) as well as her relationship with the other justices, and evolving role on the bench from moderate to liberal, RBG provides a terrific overview of a woman that most millennials are likely just getting to know.

Clocking in at a brisk ninety-seven minute running time, this energizing work will undoubtedly play better if you're already familiar with a majority of the political figures interviewed or featured throughout. But at the same time Cohen and West work hard to reach new activists and politically engaged young minds by illustrating the important part that not only RBG but any justice has the potential to play in changing the law of our land for better or worse.

Rounding out the woman as well as the feature to delightful effect, the filmmakers share her passion for the opera and dedication to her family on display in both rare home movies (the best of which celebrate her relationship with the late Marty) as well as fun interviews with close family and friends.

And while even though I'm nerdy enough to have wanted a Ken Burns sized opus that zeroes in on each decade of her life (and especially every one of those ACLU cases she argued), the multiple film festival Audience Award-winning RBG gives us a wonderful opportunity to start rooting for a different kind of superhero this summer.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

TV on Blu-ray Review: Killing Kennedy (2013)

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A succinct greatest hits album like compilation of the biggest moments from JFK’s presidency, this made for National Geographic Channel cable movie is based on the eponymous best-selling nonfiction work by Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly and author Martin Dugard.

Using an interesting crisscross timeline device, Killing Kennedy compares and contrasts the final years of the life of both John F. Kennedy (Rob Lowe) and Lee Harvey Oswald (Will Rothhaar), the man who would bring it to an untimely end on November 22, 1963.

But even though it opens with that fateful event, it leaves the conspiracy theories and post-assassination investigative aftermath to others, quickly cutting back four years earlier in time when Oswald traveled to an American embassy in Moscow to renounce his citizenship and defect to the Soviet Union as a Marxist.

An outsider wherever he goes, Oswald is accused of being an American spy in the Minsk radio factory where he works and a Soviet Spy back in the states after the former U.S. Marine gave in and returned home to Dallas, tired of both the cold weather and chilly reception from his Russian coworkers.

However his dedication to the communist cause and Cuba in particular grew stronger than ever as depicted in the film from director Nelson McCormick, which chronicles Oswald’s increasing dissatisfaction with society and alienation from family and friends, including his long-suffering Russian wife Marina (beautifully played by scene-stealer Michelle Trachtenberg).

While Oswald’s storyline is filled with details audiences may not have been as familiar with including a few facts involving how he was caught by police that caught me completely by surprise, needless to say everything in the Kennedy storyline was predictable, given the number of times that JFK’s presidency has been captured on film.

And by now following the fiftieth anniversary of his assassination, JFK has become one of the most documented American presidents in the history of the medium. While his movie star good looks and untimely end are certainly part of his mystique, he was also our first “onscreen president."

From the announcement of his candidacy to when he handily beat Nixon in the televised debates, talked directly to Americans during the U-2 scare and after the assassination when Americans sat glued to their TV sets to watch their beloved leader be laid to rest in a funeral procession worthy of a king, JFK’s most important landmarks were all captured in front of a camera.

Thus while as viewers our over-familiarity with everything from the Bay of Pigs storyline to his final day in Dallas (as evidenced, for example in the much more thorough Thirteen Days and JFK respectively) isn’t the fault of screenwriter Kelly Masterson or anyone involved since they’re working from facts, it’s still hard to do JFK justice in Killing Kennedy’s 87 minute running time.And given the time constraints, this cable movie speeds through the important events like a mix tape on fast forward.

While you only wish that instead of a few new revelatory morsels in this film or that miniseries (from The Kennedys to Parkland etc.), some of these filmmakers would’ve worked together to have crafted one true epic JFK picture instead of multiple mediocre ones, Killing Kennedy’s strength lies in emphasizing what we do not know, as depicted in the plotline of his killer Lee Harvey Oswald.

And even though it’s downright disturbing to follow the events through his eyes, another thing occurred to me while watching this production which is that the Jack Ruby angle has always been one of the most unexplored and overlooked aspects of the case.

Of course Ruby’s involvement has raised all sorts of questions about the likelihood of two “lone gunmen” or if anyone else had put him up to it. And while perhaps the answer is waiting in yet another TV movie or film, Killing Kennedy did score a few extra points for ingenuity by centering a few scenes on and from the point-of-view of Ruby in order to give us a different vantage point in addition to the ones we've always seen time and time again.

Needless to say, there’s no replacing the source material of the book or some of the far more superior biopics that have been made about the Kennedy presidency. Yet while this polished Ridley Scott production may speed by a bit too quickly at times to leave enough of an impact, it’s still above average made-for-basic-cable filmmaking that’s been beautifully transferred to this Fox Blu-ray release, complete with making of featurettes and an Ultraviolet digital copy.

While it definitely made me eager to explore the book to see what other details were unearthed in the authors’ research (despite my distaste for O’Reilly), the film’s homage to Kennedy’s love of the musical Camelot did get me thinking.Perhaps next time, instead of another straightforward docudrama, someone should update and retell Camelot with JFK and Jackie standing in for King Arthur and Lady Guinevere.

And given actress Ginnifer Goodwin’s excellent command as both Jackie in Kennedy and Snow White in Once Upon a Time, Guinevere seems like a natural progression for the talented star, not to mention one less role for the production’s talent agent to cast. Now that’s a Kennedy movie I’d definitely like to see!

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

DVD Review: Blue Caprice (2013)

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Making an effective true crime thriller is like walking a tightrope wherein the success of your film depends on how well you can balance the devastating facts with sensitivity for the lives that have been touched by the tragic event.

You have to question whether any violence is gratuitous (even if you’re going by police records and press photos) and likewise be conscious of the tendency we have as people reared on heroic narrative journeys to unconsciously root for our main character to ask yourself whether you’re accidentally glamorizing the actions or turning the perpetrator into a hero.

At the same time, like a reporter who needs to remain objective and refrain from leaning too far to one side or another, you also need to stop yourself from going the other way to the point where the subjects lose their humanity and become as exaggerated as a silent movie villain tying the hero’s girlfriend to the train tracks.

The fine line between making a mere point and making a message movie becomes yet another obstacle that threatens to knock you off that thin piece tightrope even if you know how to balance as well as a Cirque du Soleil acrobat because you’re dealing with a topic that has in all honesty affected each and every potential viewer.

Whether they'd heard about the event, turned on the news or picked up a paper to take in the aftermath, you must be ready to accept the fact that every audience member who sees it will bring their own point-of-view and preconceived judgment about the case to the theater before the first frame of your film even flickers.

Instinctively aware of these concerns, in his feature-filmmaking debut former music video and short film director Alexandre Moors takes on an altogether minimalist, unexpected approach in his psychological cinematic portrait of the two men who shared a father/son bond beginning in Antigua and ending upon their arrest for the horrific October, 2002 D.C. Sniper killings.

In Blue Caprice, Moors recounts the history behind the events that terrified the nation’s capital and shocked the globe with the senseless murder of thirteen men, women and children.

Focusing on the facts mainly to construct the overall framework for the characters’ timeline, Moors and his cowriter R.F.I. Porto opted to push the actual violent crime elements toward the periphery of the picture and instead fixate on the relationship between the two men.

Opening with the abandonment of the Antigua teen by his mother, Lee (Tequan Richmond) is left to fend for himself when – following a desperate moment in the sea – he finds a replacement parent in Isaiah Washington’s John, the American man who rescues him.

Having fled to the island after kidnapping his three children in the midst of an ugly custody battle with his soon to be ex-wife, John takes in the boy and teaches him “how to be an American.”

While he’s forced to relinquish his kids to their mother offscreen, John returns to the states shortly thereafter with the orphaned boy whom he begins referring to as his “other son,” soon grooming him for his own version of a battle against the citizens of a country he feels has wronged him.

One of the most frightening explorations of a disturbed, vengeful psyche since Robert De Niro threatened to shoot his mirror for looking at him in Taxi Driver, Isaiah Washington’s utterly mesmerizing turn as the mastermind of the sniper attacks is chilling in the way he begins slowly losing his grip on reality, which escalates from start to finish.

We see him change drastically from one moment to the next as John plots the “random but not random” shootings in a grocery store before quickly turning on the charm to con the manager into releasing his “son” back into his custody after Lee was caught stealing veggie burgers.

And through it all, Washington’s portrayal of John’s disturbing metamorphosis and eerily seductive chameleon-like ability to talk people into things is further proof that he’s one of contemporary cinema’s most underrated actors.

After realizing the teen is a natural with a rifle once the two goof around with the gun collection kept by John’s Army buddy (played by Tim Blake Nelson), John begins to train his protégé for battle, conditioning and manipulating him to prove his love and obedience with a few test crimes in Seattle that set them up with the used blue Caprice John fashioned a shooting bay out of in the trunk.

And when the wife of Nelson’s character (played by Joey Lauren Adams) remarks “what an awful car” as the two men drive out of sight, her dead-on assessment is the understatement of the film as little did she or the rest of the world know what madness John had in store with regard to that blue Caprice.

Admirably avoiding the actuality of gory carnage and senseless shootings which makes the emotional impact of the implied violence all the more horrific, Moors spends a majority of the final act investigating the dynamic of the men and the way they execute their plan as opposed to zeroing in on the killings themselves.

Serving as yet another reminder that a movie is far more thought-provoking for what it doesn’t show than why it does, Blue Caprice likewise raises more questions than it offers answers.

Respecting the intelligence of his audience, Moors and Porto strengthen their already solid movie by ending things on such an abrupt note that it forces viewers to engage in a conversation about what they’ve just seen The noblest goal for any true crime thriller – Blue Caprice gets people talking about why these things happen in the first place.

And while it’s unfortunately too late to change what happened in 2002 – as Moors drives home in his striking debut feature it’s never too late to try and dissect events of the past to see if we can learn from them in order to stop these things from happening again in the future.

Yet far from being a message movie or too overly optimistic, Caprice reminds and ultimately warns us that sometimes as much as we want answers, there’s no reasonable explanation that could make us understand why and how someone could do what these two men did in 2002 that could put a stop to all public shootings in the future.

Leaving us with as many dead ends as there are potential solutions, one of Blue’s strongest realizations is that while one of the sniper’s motives was vengeful madness, from the eyes of a teen desperately in need of a parent, another motive was love.

And given the two conflicting thoughts pulling us in two different directions at the same time, we begin to see that what Moors needed to make the film is the same thing we need to view it – namely, the balance to keep everything in perspective.

Anchored by the haunting turns of its two leads including Tequan Richmond’s understated performance that helps ground Washington when his John begins to dominate, Moors's auspicious debut is now available on DVD to coincide with and celebrate its Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Feature.

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Blu-ray Review -- Murph: The Protector (2013)

Now Available to Own
   

Known for reading anything he could get his hands on, it wasn’t until the son they’d assumed was studying law requested a nonfiction work about the Navy Seals that the parents of Michael P. Murphy had any idea that their son was considering a future in the field of special operations for the U.S. military.

And although his father was a Vietnam veteran who’d been awarded the Purple Heart for his service and courage under fire, initially neither parent was particularly thrilled with their son’s dangerous career choice.

Yet at the same time a life of Seal service seemed like a natural fit for Murphy, given the fact that he not only took to water like a “water bug” and likewise relished in team-centric sports but also routinely offered protection to friends and strangers alike who were outnumbered or picked on due to his bravery, loyalty and good heart.

Telling his mom that he could either sit at a desk and be unhappy for the next thirty years or go after his dreams with the same “can do” spirit he cherished in the Thomas The Tank Engine story that she had read to him as a child, Michael P. Murphy took a leap of faith, surviving the agony of Hell Week and a wicked Cellulitis infection that almost cost him a leg before heading to war.

Taking the vow of secrecy regarding his missions with the utmost seriousness, he didn’t offer many details as to his whereabouts but never forgot the fallen American heroes of 9/11 whom he was fighting for, asking a friend to send a stack of fireman’s patches to his team including the one he proudly sewed on his uniform as a constant reminder as to why he was there in the first place.

Yet it wasn’t until a coworker of his father’s pointed at the mountains behind Michael and his men in a photo he’d sent him told his dad that it looked like he was in Afghanistan rather than Iraq that his parents realized just how dangerous the missions Michael went on and never discussed actually were.

Unfortunately, the harsh realities of the war in Afghanistan were about to be known all around the world as reports of the horrifying tragedy that occurred during Operation Red Wings made their way onto the evening news. One of the deadliest in history –  the incident found four of our men pinned by the Taliban in the firefight of their life before a rescue chopper with sixteen of our soldiers was hit by a rocket propelled grenade.

Out of that absolutely devastating set of events which were recently adapted into the feature film Lone Survivor based on Marcus Lutrell’s book of the same name, Lutrell found he was the only survivor when selflessly – just as he'd always done to help outnumbered men in fights or bullied kids in school – Murphy put himself in harm’s way for the good of the team. Giving up his position to find reception in plain sight and call for the backup that would never actually arrive, Murphy was gunned down by enemy fire – ever the protector he’d always been.

A moving documentary portrait of an exemplary human being and true blue American hero, Murph relies on the first person accounts of friends, family and military personnel among others who all offer stirring, at times funny, inspiring and celebratory memories of the man.

While it’s sadly a bit light on footage featuring the deceased subject who went on to receive a posthumous Medal of Honor from President Bush as well as a Navy warship given his name, it’s nonetheless a riveting, vital account of a man who truly earned his nickname of protector.

Although it isn’t incredibly well-polished, given some inefficient and downright confusing editing choices that throw viewers for a loop by suddenly breaking away from Murphy’s story to talk about an entirely different person without an ample explanation or title card clue as to who the high school student onscreen is until fairly late into the movie, these mistakes are easy to forgive.

And thankfully, a few weaknesses aside, Murph remains strong as an exuberant and vital patriotic biographical documentary well-timed in its Blu-ray and DVD release to coincide with the theatrical debut of Lone Survivor. 

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.