Movie Review

Oliver Stone's "JFK" is on TV tonight. I'm kind of surprised I hadn't ever gotten around to watching it before now, as it is a subject that I find compelling - perhaps marking the moment in history when the CIA took over the world. At any rate, it is much too long and could have been mightily improved if the editor had cut out all of Sissy Spacek's screeching scenes - which is essentially all of Sissy Spacek's scenes - and all the scenes of those poor little no-talent kids portraying New Orleans DA Jim Garrison's children. (Seriously, were these the casting director’s kids? They managed to come up with a big name star for the other roles in the movie - Kevin Costner, Ed Asner, Jack Lemmon, Vince D’Onofrio, Sissy Spacek, Kevin Bacon, Gary Oldman, Donald Sutherland, Walter Matthau, Tommy Lee Jones, John Candy, Joe Pesci - and they couldn’t locate a couple of kids who could act?)

I didn't make it past the arrest of Clay Shaw and the beginning of the subsequent smearing of Garrison via the government and its shills in the media, but what I did get through included some points about the Kennedy assassination that I had not been exposed to even though I've read a number of different books and articles about the ridiculous Warren Commission report (much like the 9/11 Commission - at least in credulity and value) and all the plots and characters involved who never made it into the report. I was curious enough about a couple of things to Google, and came upon this Wikipedia page listing the players involved in the Shaw trial. Just reading their names makes you think it must all be made up. (Garrison's name on his birth certificate was actually Earling Carothers Garrison - not Jim.)

And speaking of no talent - "The Black Swan" was very, very seriously overhyped, wasn't it? I watched that recently, and almost didn't make it through - but not because of its length.