Blu-ray Review: Parkland (2013)

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When Parkland Hospital received word that President John F. Kennedy was being transported to their ER on November 22, 1963 – less than an hour after he’d arrived in Dallas, Texas – their first assumption was that the commander-in-chief had become the victim of flu season.

It was only after they were greeted by the sight of the First Lady’s blood-spattered pink suit, frenzied Secret Service agents and the near lifeless body of the nation’s leader that the young residents and nurses covering the ER’s lunch shift realized that the president was the victim of an assassin’s bullet rather than a virus.

 

Reliving that traumatic day from the points-of-view of the men and women who were there, we’re given a thorough docudrama styled account of one of the most covered events in United States history.

Pushing aside conspiracy theories of Oliver Stone proportion along with the melodramatic approaches often utilized in small screen miniseries biopic treatments of the Kennedy family in favor of a heavily researched, fact-based account, writer/director Peter Landesman adapted the ambitious Parkland from Four Days in November, the shorter publication of Vincent Bugliosi’s Edgar Award winning nonfiction work, Reclaiming History.

 

And in doing so, Landesman manages to put us right in the midst of the chaos, taking advantage of the ensemble drama’s natural tendency to draw us into the action like flies-on-the-wall while we listen in, weighing the moral, ethical and humanistic dilemmas faced by the characters onscreen.

In addition to the bravura, emotionally exhausting opener that transports us to the titular trauma room as the young doctors on staff struggle to revive the president, we’re placed in the shoes of Dallas businessman Abraham Zapruder (Paul Giamatti), who unwittingly captures the shocking murder on his 8mm film camera and is then placed in the unenviable position of deciding what to do with the footage.

 

While adding up the facts to identify who pulled the trigger, we’re brought to FBI’s local office where Special Agent James Hosty (Ron Livingston) is horrified by the realization that the man he’d been personally tracking for eighteen months on a hunch – Lee Harvey Oswald (Jeremy Strong) – may indeed have been the one who fired the fatal shot.

Never judging its characters' actions directly, Landesman leaves the viewer to decide right from wrong, painting an admirably objective portrait of four shocking days in November, bringing us into the confidences and conversations of citizens that hadn’t yet been captured onscreen in other accounts.

And perhaps this is most effective in the characterization of the hardworking family man Robert Lee Oswald (James Badge Dale), who is utterly appalled and taken aback to learn that his very own brother is responsible for the death of the beloved figure.

 

Thoroughly engrossing despite its surprisingly short running time of just eighty-seven minutes, while admittedly a few of the G-men and Secret Service agents blur together without the benefit of adequate screen-time to separate the sea of suits and set them apart in order for their words and actions to have the maximum dramatic impact, it’s a minor flaw in an otherwise mostly faultless film.

Though it’s light on bonus features save for deleted scenes and filmmaker commentary, the work, which is reminiscent of an HBO original movie and fittingly produced by Playtone’s "Band of Brothers" in the form of Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Bill Paxton, is transferred with razor-sharp clarity for its Blu-ray debut to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination.

Emotionally charged and endlessly eye-opening with the benefit of excellent casting to make some of the underwritten individuals instantly more three-dimensional, Parkland depicts unexpected profiles of courage of otherwise ordinary men and women over the course of four extraordinary days.   

Text ©2013, 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.

Canvas

Director:
Joseph Greco

I’ll never look at “Joey Pants” the same way again. From answering phones with the phrase “Moscone Bail Bonds” in Midnight Run to terrifying Jennifer Tilly in Bound all the way up through his intense turn on The Sopranos, Joe Pantoliano has become the go-to guy for mafia roles with his ability to dominate every scene he’s in with his vicious dialogue and despicable actions. Yet, as Pantoliano himself noted in a Tufts University Q&A for his latest film Canvas, (which he also produced), he didn’t want to be defined by his Sopranos character. After only a few scenes of writer/director Joseph Greco’s emotionally moving feature film debut, "Joey Pants" the mobster tough guy is long forgotten.

Based on a true story and inspired by Greco’s own childhood living with a mentally ill mother, the filmmaker decided to sublimate not only what he’d gone through artistically (thereby following in the footsteps of both of his creative parents) but also to address the issue of mental illness compassionately and accurately to “combat stigma.” Wholeheartedly embraced by the mental health community as Greco shares in the Tufts Q&A featured on the Canvas DVD, the film stars talented young actor Devon Gearhart as Chris who, as the movie opens, is returning to Florida from Alaska where he’d stayed with his Aunt Joanne. His hopes that his mother Mary (Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden), who’d begun showing signs of mental illness eighteen months earlier, would have improved are dashed when he realizes that her schizophrenia is slowing taking over as her loyally loving construction worker husband John (Pantoliano) looks on helplessly.

After a domestic disturbance ensues when Mary fails to take the always changing medications prescribed by her doctors, she is forcibly institutionalized by the police, leaving John and Chris angrily frustrated and trying to figure out how to get back the woman they both love. While Chris must contend with ridicule from classmates and begins skipping school to head for the beach his aspiring artist mother loved to paint, John sublimates his feelings in constructing the perfect sailboat in the backyard, leading neighbors and other community members to question whether or not both of Chris’s parents are mentally ill.

Beautiful, sensitive, and earnest, Canvas draws strength in its authenticity and it’s an understated, truly independent work sure to get audiences talking, if they’re fortunate enough to track it down. A film festival favorite, having earned the Best Feature Film Award at Sedona, an Audience Award at Ft. Lauderdale, Sarasota and Natucket, Canvas, which has recently been released on DVD, was also chosen by legendary film critic Roger Ebert for inclusion in his 2008 Ebertfest.

The Mist

Director:
Frank Darabont

Attention market shoppers, we have carnage on aisle four.

In the aftermath following a violent storm that wreaked havoc on a small Maine town, movie poster artist David Drayton (Thomas Jane) notices an ominous mist that has appeared over the lake. Packing up his young son Billy (Nathan Gamble) and offering a ride to his one-time enemy, the New York lawyer Brent Norton (Andre Braugher) with whom he’s begun to tentatively mend fences while evaluating their respective property damage, the three head into town to stock up on supplies for what they predict will be another violent New England storm.

Once inside their local market which, like the town itself, seems to be a place that has escaped time in its quaint 50’s like aura, they share stories with others and are startled when an elderly man runs into the store visibly shaken and bloodied, yelling, “Something in the mist took John Lee! Don’t go out there!"

Something in the man’s tone, not to mention the blood begins to cause a panic and while most feel confident to trust their neighbor, they watch in horror as a disbelieving man exits the store. Shockingly vague violence and screams follow, leaving the man dead and thus begins one of last year’s most chilling sleepers that can only have come from the godfather of suspense himself, Mr. Stephen King.

Adapted by longtime King fan, Shawshank Redemption and Green Mile writer/director Frank Darabont, this moodily haunting horror film sets itself up like a modern episode of The Twilight Zone (and in a DVD feature King notes that he was inspired by the horror classic TV show Panic). With an emphasis on characterization and psychology, we feel as terrified as the townspeople as they barricade themselves inside the market and logically try to deduce not only what’s going on outside the store but also their next steps in how to proceed from there.

Initial worries that the mist was a chemical pollution cloud soon give way to greater fear when the resident town psycho, the (as King said) warden-like Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) pulls out her bible and begins to whip a group of shoppers into a Revelations frenzy saying that the wrath of God has been unleashed on the town heathens and the end is near. After further carnage ensues when additional townspeople are killed by seemingly otherworldly beasts as they test the limits of their imprisonment, soon the store is divided into two groups with Mrs. Carmody gaining momentum on one side and the more proactive, sensible citizens headed up by David Drayton, shopkeeper Ollie Weeks (a terrific Toby Jones) and the town’s new schoolteacher Amanda Dunfrey (star of Darabont’s Majestic, Laurie Holden) becoming the minority banding together in a different aisle.

It’s by this point that the audience, nearly working in tandem with David and his group, try to solve the mystery on their own, although admittedly we realize that the horrifying vagueness of the situation is precisely what is driving most of the fear, as both on and off the screen fingers all seem to point in the direction of the nearby military base long accused of dabbling in the extraterrestrial in a top secret operation called Project Arrowhead.

While we’re never quite sure the mystery itself will be solved, we’re riveted the entire way, although I found myself disappointed when The Mist morphed from a tense, thinking person’s horror film into one obsessed with mutant bird-sized bugs and slimy tentacle creatures as opposed to concentrating on the fear-based psychological breakdown and terrifying "group-think" mentality. Thus, as the running time increases, The Mist becomes an overdone and not terribly satisfying B movie, which may have played better in the black and white photography that director Darabont had intended (and indeed the color and black and white versions will be released in a 2 disc DVD set).

Although granted, Mrs. Carmody’s conversion of the shoppers seems to occur much too quickly, the film’s dual horror show of oversized mutants and bible thumping madmen and women keep us distracted enough to forgive some of the film’s flaws and ultimately its high-speed pace and clever characterization make this a roughly average thriller that’s strengthened considerably by its much discussed, shocking conclusion that, although it wasn’t written in King’s novel, seems to be the only fitting finale. In fact, the conclusion was so vital to the film’s storytelling success that writer/director Darabont received confirmation from the Weinstein Company and Dimension Films that his original script including that unforgettable ending could not be aletered.

Best viewed on a sunny, mist-free day, while Darabont’s The Mist will most likely be overshadowed by superior King adaptations such as Kubrick’s The Shining, Reiner’s Misery and Stand By Me, and Darabont’s own Shawshank Redemption, it’s still a deft chiller and one that, as Darabont noted on the DVD, actually made the legendary King jump “three feet” during a screening of the film. And in the end, box office and reviews aside, scaring King with his own material should be the truest form of evaluation for any King adaptation.

Into the Wild

Director:
Sean Penn

It almost seems like it’s a prerequisite for becoming an adult but most people I’ve talked with have had a similar feeling of restlessness following graduation when, after years of raising one’s hand and waiting for a hall pass to leave the room, there’s the unmistakable urge to break free, to wander, to explore, to see beauty in nature, and to stop worrying about the clock on the wall. For me it followed high school when my friend Shelley introduced me to Jack Kerouac and Bob Dylan and I felt a sense of wonder I hadn’t encountered since I’d first read Steinbeck and Fitzgerald—a hopeful sense of idealism, an unquestioning love for the idea of the American dream, and an overwhelming sense of wanting to get out and see the gorgeous landscapes and talk to people just as people and not as clips on the news categorized into whatever stereotype the network has decided to spin that day.

While my destination of Arizona ended up becoming my new home after a traditional visit, I admit that, as bizarre and illogical as it is, there is something undeniably intoxicating about the journey that Christopher McCandless took following his graduation from Emory University in 1990. Even though, those familiar with the resulting novel by Jon Krakauer or from the media coverage, knew that his story ended tragically inside that Magic Bus in the Alaskan wilderness, there’s a haunting indescribable joy mixed with dread and sadness that comes from watching his tale realized on the big screen by a compassionate filmmaker in actor turned writer/director Sean Penn.

Penn, who’d wanted to make the film for more than ten years and originally had envisioned Leonardo DiCaprio in the role, waited for official permission and approval from the McCandless family according to IMDb and I think that the film benefits not only from the space in time from the day that Christopher fled Atlanta in his Datsun but also from Penn’s maturity and growth as an artist in his own right as I recall the multitude of characters, performances, directorial efforts and choices he’s made over the last ten years as well.

After only a few moments of watching actor Emile Hirsch disappear into the role of Christopher in a career making effort, it seems to be an absolute crime that he was denied a Best Actor nomination from the 2007 Oscar season. A gifted student with the promise of an even brighter future at Harvard Law School, Christopher makes a choice that seems to shock everyone but his loving sister Carine (Jena Malone) when he donates his professional school fund of $24,000 to Oxfam, uses a scissors to cut up his credit cards and identification and burns his social security card in an act of defiance before taking to the road. Inspired by his beloved books by Thoreau and London, Chris heads west until his car fails him in the unforgiving Arizona desert and begins to "hoof it," now as what hippies would later dub him in his role as a “leather-tramp.” Fitting to his newly dubbed name of Alexander Supertramp, the film, divided into chapters that illustrate his new life from birth, to adolescence, manhood etc. follows Chris/Alex as he meets some people who would become like a second family to him on the road including a terrific Catherine Keener and Brian Dierker as hippies Jan and Rainey, a memorable Vince Vaughn as his farming boss in South Dakota whom he writes postcards to regularly throughout the film and countless others while his sister and parents (William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden) must contend with his absence without any explanation, save for the flashbacks showing a rather tumultuous upbringing with some abuse, rage and lies. In a truly heartbreaking and Oscar nominated role, Hal Holbrook plays a retired military veteran with a tragic past who grandfatherly looks after Chris before he ultimately heads north for his true destination of Alaska.

Soon the film, which has intercut his past travels for two years before making it to the bus which would be his final destination, meets up in the same timeline and it careens towards its chilling and desperate finale—yet there’s a beauty and a quiet to these moments that recall the wonder and innocent joy of the earlier work that keeps things bearable, despite viewers' underlying sense of dread.

Gorgeously photographed on the exact locations from the life of Chris McCandless with an unrecognizable Hirsch who, in his brave role lost not only forty pounds but also used no doubles or stuntmen in even the most dangerous of situations, it’s Penn’s greatest directorial achievement so far and manages to hook us completely after its stylistically uneven start with too many scrawled journal entries and notes moving across the canvas of the frame. With an undeniable nod to the road pictures of the 60’s and 70’s such as Easy Rider and Bound for Glory, Penn’s film is admirable and unique in the sense of it seeming like an actual document of a life and one that, unlike some of the more polished works of 2007, will not become dated with each passing year, kind of like the life of McCandless that will no doubt continue to fascinate and inspire for decades to come.