Reviews

Roy Kissin, who co-wrote the screenplay, competed in the Dipsea, if memory serves. He was an outstanding runner from Stanford, I believe. Other repeat race winners featured in the film were Darryl Beardall, who was a major character in the film, Sal Vasquez, who won the race seven times, and Russ Kiernan. Jenny Biddulph was also in it, in her early teens at the time. She is know better for being the co-creator, with her late husband, Brian Maxwell, of energy bars, namely Power Bars. The race is handicapped by age and sex, and she did very well, given a head start because of her young age and gender. Bill Bailey was a real radical activist from the '30s, as was Walter Stack, who was a longshoreman during the 1934 General Strike in San Francisco, and in his seventies, the president/impresario of the renowned Dolphin South End Running Club. The race has been held annually for over a century.

Contrary to the review above, Lenny did not co-write and co-direct this film, unless he somehow managed to do so five years after his death. If anyone could do that, it would be Lenny.

Bruce's stream-of-consciousness comedic riffing, his ridiculing of homophobia and the denigration of Native Americans, his doing all the voices of the various characters, epitomize his genius, accomplished while he encountered endless formidable adversaries, the direct descendants of fanatical Comstockery. What torment he endured was a product in no small part of religious fanaticism, the same sort of social control that required the Supreme Court to decide against the forces of theocracy in Griswold v. Connecticut, Roe v. Wade, and Lawrence v. Texas.

Commentators here have complained about the quality of the film, but in 1971, lacking both the budget of a Disney studio and the current state of technology that allows for instance, for South Park, it captured the essence of the man and the quality of his work. Without Lenny, we couldn't have had Richard Pryor.

I drove 140 miles, round trip, in foreboding weather, to attend the nearest U.S. opening.

It was well worth it.

First some context.

I've freelanced for decades, including during a war, successfully exposed major governmental corruption, weathered concerted retaliation and have been regularly appalled at the weakness of corporate, bureaucratic and political weasels who abandoned ideals, professionalism and integrity, "going along to get along." I was aware of Webb's writing and vilification at the time they occurred, in the late '90s, but for over 50 years I had a front row seat for even pre-Nixonian "drug wars" through the "crack epidemic," genocidal American imperialism, and the treatment of many other reporters who dared challenge the status quo, who had the courage to painfully examine the quaint and naive notion of collective national decency.

Webb's story, so artfully recounted and performed, was unfortunately true. He was accused of distorting the actuality of Reagan-era hypocrisy, but his reporting was accurate. He never accused the CIA of intentionally destroying the social fabric of minority communities, but made it clear that Harlem and Watts and Chicago's South Side were victims of "collateral damage," the inevitable consequences of the abandonment of any pretense of morality ostensibly possessed by the Reagan administration.

Indeed, spurred by new information about the practice of questionable property seizures, Webb had once again picked at the scab covering the decade-old, gangrenous infestation of our government, later well described by Robert Parry in his October 2004 Salon piece, "How Kerry exposed the Contra-cocaine scandal." To get the story, Webb had exposed himself to blood curdling danger, both at his own home in the U.S. and on the scene, in Central America.

Perhaps the worst betrayal of public trust by this film is depicted in recapitulation of the collective response of the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, after being pressured by the CIA and the State Department. The papers' responded with hyperactive involvement in the personal destruction of Webb's reporting, reputation and life. Previously. the same papers, pressured by Reagan administration officials, buried Senator John Kerry's investigation, and shared subsequent malfeasance in their facilitating the Bush/Cheney administration's illegal and genocidal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The NY Times and Post had some odious history themselves. Reporters Ray Bonner and Alma Guillermoprieto were reassigned to boring beats after their courageous exposure of the incredibly savage El Mozote Massacre in El Salvador.

There, the U.S. trained, funded and armed Atlacatl Battalion murdered almost a thousand peasants, largely neutral evangelical Protestants, and mostly women and children, on December 11, 1981. Stanley Miesler's El Mozote Case Study, published in the Columbia Journalism Review, exhaustively documented their fates.

This film captured all those similar disgraceful elements. It needs to be seen by a wider audience just as it would be wise to make "Dr. Strangelove" part of a core curriculum in the formal education of American adolescents.

This fast paced film is simply riveting. Producer Diego Luna cast Michael Peña in the lead. Peña honestly portrays one of the most important leaders in American labor struggles. John Malkovich joins Luna, co-producing as well as in acting in a villainous role. He exquisitely plays a fictionalized composite, an exploitative Machiavellian grower, comfortable with manipulating family as well as local and national public officials to frustrate Chavez's organizing,and not above promoting lethal violence when it suited his agenda.

The movie tracks the dangerous and demanding path taken by Chavez in the decades it took for him and his compañeros to win dignity and living wages for mostly Hispanic and Filipino farm workers. It faithfully displays his courage, religious devotion, acumen and self sacrifice, and the alliances he built, as well as the political and public relations solidarity and coups necessary for success.

Only so much can be covered in a film of this length, but it fairly faithfully tracks his intense commitment to "la causa," and how that conflicted with his competing desires to be a father, husband and provider. It touches on his personal sacrifices that extended to long fasts and marches of hundreds of miles, and a willingness to be subjected to brutal physical and political attacks meant to defeat his efforts, but never abandoning Ghandian non-violence. His career, though longer due to Martin Luther King's youthful assassination, overlaps King's considerably in era, unwavering commitment, allies and methods.

Given the magnitude of the substantial task to portray such a major and complex figure and movement, the development of other important characters suffers. They include his brother Richard (played by Jacob Vargas), his career-long ally and foil, activist Dolores Huerta (Rosario Dawson) who has outlived and outperformed most of her contemporaries, and the late, long time United Farm Workers powerhouse attorney/negotiator, Jerry Cohen, though all deliver strong performances.

Absent from the screenplay are the equally demanding lettuce strike and most of the frustrations with the Teamsters Union and the UFW's eventual settlement with them.

This film recapitulates an essential part of late 20th Century American political and social history that legitimately deserves a wider audience than it will likely receive.

I was watching something interesting on another channel and went to this during unfortunately long and frequent commercials. I was only drawn to it because I was bewildered how anyone could possibly make and release a movie of such poor quality. It was like watching a real-life train wreck.

The acting was atrocious. The special effects were so amateurish as to be universally laughable, especially the supposed windshield hits from rearward gunfire.

The plot was something that might have been produced by low-functioning nine-year-old.

This had to be one of the most ridiculous movies I've ever seen. There was not a single 30-second segment I watched that was incapable of producing a violent emetic reflex.

No exploding cars, no immensely expensive special effects, just a solid movie with an exceptional cast, well filmed. Perhaps that's why it seems to have attracted very little critical attention, which is a shame.

The actors playing the majority of the leading roles in cast were a little older than would have been representative of the Weathermen in their short period of activity, 1969 through the mid-70s. Redford especially, would have been 33 when the organization was formed by younger activists. Jenkins, younger than the rest of his supposed contemporaries was about the right age for his role and though Gleeson is actually too young for the part, he doesn't look it.

Some elements are a bit implausible. LeBouf's often rude questioning of sources would be unlikely to elicit a positive response from real life participants who would have been more likely to have been put off by his questions.

All these are relatively minor flaws, and the movie is a quantum leap more realistic that others of its genre. Though fiction, it's a decent treatment of a significant episode in U.S. political history.

This is an extraordinary film, documenting the carefully crafted, decades-long propaganda effort that prepared the West for acceptance of a Zionist, post-WW II, takeover of Palestine.

I lived in the Bronx, New York City, through the world war, the 1948 war on the Palestinians, and for almost a decade after the Korean war.

At the time there were a million Jews living in the Bronx, more than there were in the British Mandate of Palestine. The neighborhood I lived in was predominantly Christian and overwhelmingly white.

Television was in its infancy, so the only news of Palestine we got was through a press that was sympathetic to the immigration that took their land from the Palestinians.

I had no idea of the extent of the propaganda that has rationalized the oppression of Palestinians, went back that far. Through my childhood and adolescence, I saw no balance to reporting about that forced colonization. We in the U.S. were collectively ignorant as to the nature of the land seizures, that brutal exodus, the forced diaspora of the indigenous inhabitants. Golda Meir who had immigrated from Russia to Milwaukee as an eight-year-old, then immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1921, eventually becoming prominent in the Zionist government, was a folk hero to us.

The mechanism of telling this story is a brilliant instrument. It focuses simply on the produce that was the primary export commodity of an invaded land, using of contemporary film footage and photographs, including interviews with elderly Jews who lived in Palestine before the forced expulsion of a huge part of the Arab population. This film documents the true nature of what has been presented to us in the U.S. for over six decades as a legitimate response to Arab attacks.

That meme was clearly as fraudulent as Hitler's putative causus belli for the invasion of Poland; his Nazi soldiers dressed as Polish cavalry faking an invasion of Germany.

This puts the current cruelty to the Palestinians in the West Bank into a sharp historical relief. It is shameful that our government is so wedded to the myth, the one it subsidizes and allows to be further illegally financed, the one protected by our sole opposition to any restraint on Israel's expansionism in the Security Council, that this genocidal campaign can continue its expansionism, its subjugation and destruction of the native peoples of that land.

The Holocaust was the most horrific event in the past century, but it does not begin to justify in any remote sense such a eradication being launched by its victims against a people who had no part in its execution.

This documentary gives us a sorely needed alternative perspective in this age of public relations saturation that has successfully promoted a bogus historical story line that has been used to justify such draconian oppression.

I've heard of this movie since it was new. It came out about the same time as "The French Connection," a splendid movie with great acting, direction, cinematography, dialogue, story line and believability.

I always assumed this was a great movie, based on its reputation.

I was very misinformed.

I watched it on television, through all the bad cinematography, errors and lapses in continuity, absurd plot, hopeless screenplay, but after the scene with the judge and the D.A. in the latter's office, that was it. It was way too stupid to put up with it any longer.

I lived in San Francisco off and on from 1961 to 1982 and it didn't represent anything close to reality in criminal justice with which I was extremely familiar, during that period. It didn't even make any sense geographically, for instance with the bag man magically moving from one end of the city to the other in the absence of available transportation, and the same with the final bus scene.

This debacle was inspired, if you could call it that, by the Zodiac killer, who murdered individuals and couples in San Francisco and all around California. He was never apprehended and his identity remains unknown. This was an opportunity for a great movie that was completely wasted.

Dish TV gives free access to some channels each month as a come on.

This month the "E" channels are featured, eight of them, playing generally good movie, some great ones, sans commercials.

So my wife and I, attracted by the prospect of a piece with Samuel L. Jackson and Geena Davis, sat through this stinker.

It started off bad. That's usually enough for me to change the channel or to walk out of the theater, since stinkers rarely get better. My wife, a science fiction fan, was better prepared to sit through the progressively nonsensical plot deterioration.

Given a weekend without distractions I wondered if I could do a better job writing a screenplay on a single weekend despite the occasional interruption? Near the end, I wasn't wondering any more.

Toward the end it was so painfully awful I was having real trouble continuing to watch, but my wife wanted to see how it came out.

So how did it come out?

Badly of course, though in this case, that's an enormous understatement.

What a colossal waste of time and talent, money and perfectly good vehicles.

I'd never heard of this but saw it on the E channel. What a wonderful surprise! It would be rare to find a film that had better acting, direction and writing.

Amy Adams, is simply riveting. A relaxed Alan Arkin comes across like someone you might want to take to lunch.

My only minor problem was with the casting of two roles. The main character, Adams, is supposed to have been a high school classmate of two supporting actors, but she was 34 and Amy Redford and Kevin Chapman were actually 38 and 41, when this was filmed in 2008.

Paul Dooley, an actor and former stand up comedian who has mostly done TV roles for over four decades, was 80 years old at the time of filming. He does as splendid if brief job, as a used car salesman.

So how could it have turned out so awful? How can you have Kline and Keitel, Steiger and Sarandon, Aiello, Rickman, Mastrantonio, and yet produce such a stinker?

Start with an awful script. 1,000 monkeys couldn't have done worse.

From there, proceed to unbelievably bad direction.

I kept waiting for it to get funny, since it was never going to get serious. It was never going to make sense. But the comedic talents of many of the cast were wasted as well.

I thought the actors might revolt, mid filming. I mean, after all, why have your name associated with this kind of a stinker? I kept thinking of "The Producers." The producers of this lemon must have sold 1,000% of the movie, right? They needed to have it go straight down the toilet so they could pocket the investors' money without having to account for it. There would be no "Springtime with Hitler" to save the day.

But Norman Jewison produced this. He's made a dozen great movies!

This doesn't belong in the vault at MGM. It belongs in a crypt at Forest Lawn. With a stake through its heart.

For all his personal foibles, and despite having (intentionally?) gone a bit flabby, Crowe is the consummate actor. He delivers another commanding performance, reminiscent of his powerful roles in "The Insider" and "Gladiator." The character development is largely confined to him, with increasingly less focus in descending order on co-stars Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams. Helen Mirren as a Katherine Graham-type character makes the briefest of appearances, a waste, given her considerable talent,with Jeff Daniels and Jason Bateman playing oleaginous blowhards. Robin Penn Wright is virtually the only other cast member with an important role. All others are essentially bit players.

IMDb's description of the "partnership" with law enforcement is a bit overstated.

Despite occasional lapses in continuity, i.e., "$26,000" and the questionable diversion of focus from a real and present threat to our national interests embodied in the thinly veiled corporate Eric Prinz/Blackwater and Halliburton-based presence, this remains a gripping tale, well worth seeing.

It might have been far better.

Late in his brief career, Steve McQueen, a superstar for his roles in action movies, intensely wanted a chance to demonstrate his abilities in a classical framework. To that end he produced this cinematic version of the Ibsen play about a 19th-Century whistleblower and worked for scale, as did other actors. The script is adapted from the excellent adaptation done by Arthur Miller a half-century ago.

The screenplay closely follows the original work and utilizes a minimum of sets with only one exterior shoot. Despite this constriction, this film is truly unforgettable. The acting by McQueen, Richard Dysart, Charles Durning and Bibi Anderson is superb. The cinematography is excellent as well, conveying an almost tactile appreciation of period costumes and interiors of the sort found in Matewan by John Sayles.

The examination of the political and emotional whirlwinds described by Ibsen would be topical today.

The regrettable part of this enterprise was the inexplicable failure of the studio to release the film in the U.S. DVD versions can be found and used PAL videotape versions are available from the U.K., Australia and other countries that use that format.

This has to be one of the better movies I've ever seen. My wife and I watched, transfixed, throughout this intense drama.

Bruce Willis gives one of the best performances of his career, on a par with his role in "Pulp Fiction." He is absolutely believable as a cop trying to do the right thing despite overwhelming pressures and odds. The always impressive David Morse brings to his performance the steady professionalism he displayed in movie versions of Stephen King novels.

Perhaps the biggest cast surprise for me was Mos Def in the role of "Eddie Bunker" who gained my substantial respect with a terrific job as co-star.

Despite all that quality, the strongest asset of this film however, is the work of the writer, Richard Wenk. While watching, the viewer may become particularly aware of the power of this screenplay because of the subtle tributes to the late brilliant writer, actor and ex-con, the Mos Def character's namesake. It is hard not to think of Bunker's authorship, acting and presence that he lent to classics such as "Reservoir Dogs" and Dustin Hoffman's "Straight Time." There are riveting touches throughout, as graceful and gripping as the briefest flash of empathy that forces the viewer to think, to interpret, brought offhandedly in the person of a Transit cop.

It's hard to recall another action movie that shares the authenticity of this work. Even while the characters evolve, the true core of this story is in its quietly drawing of the viewer into that process of evolution, the birth of epiphany under adversity. Even while one is watching carefully, that direction may only become fully apparent in the final scene.

This writing is simply brilliant. It reminds one of the strongest works of Nicholas Roeg.

I have been around scary people for much of my life and have scared a hell of a lot of people whom I think deserved to be frightened. I spent two years in Vietnam, worked in prisons, with alcoholics and addicts and mentally ill street people who occasionally, unmedicated, can get pretty worrisome. I've found myself on the wrong end of too many guns. A white guy, I've lived in ghettos. I've been around more than my share of heavily armed and angry drunks. I've been attacked with murderous intent in foreign countries and while riding a motorcycle on U.S. rural roads, a la Easy Rider.

Despite this, I can only think of a few instances in my life when I have been truly afraid, such as when I've fought a raging forest fire with middling chances of escape, and being in the middle of an ocean in a hurricane on a small ship.

I'm not someone who is easily able to suspend disbelief. I have found few science fiction movies of any interest, save for comedies such as "Mars Attacks." None have been fear provoking.

But sitting there with my wife in a darkened theater, I found Javier Bardem's portrayal of Anton to be truly a frightening and believable character. From his first encounter with a storekeeper, he was completely convincing. When he had the upper hand over a competitor assassin and he was described by the latter as "a psychopath," I thought, "Well, that sure fits."

The only thing I couldn't understand was the failure of a character (trying to avoid a spoiler here) to dare the coin toss. People cling so tightly to life, it seemed difficult to believe.

What a great movie. What great actors and directors.

Luke Perry is not Steve McQueen, but there's no one who could save this stinker. The plot leaps from one disconnected implausibility to another.

I can't imagine how anyone could sit through this to the end, no matter how adept they might be at willful suspension of disbelief. I assume the investors needed a tax deduction.

The Robin Cook novel is said to be better. It's hard to imagine how it could be worse.

It's the only thing on television? Go take a walk instead. You'll feel better and won't have wasted your time.

Take a nap, even.

Or, there's always South Park.

My wife and I watched this dramatic documentary on Free Speech T.V. I was prompted to call two death penalty attorney friends in Colorado and Oregon to alert them that it was playing.

It documents the initiative that caused journalism students in Chicago to pursue old, closed cases, to find that a dozen innocent men had been condemned to death. They uncovered law enforcement malfeasance, rigged trials, even the identity of a true murderer from whom they obtained a confession and corroboration from the killer's wife.

Besides the human drama other commentators here have noted, it displays a stellar example of community organizing and media work.

The cinematography is near-flawless, the editing superb.

Perhaps the most stirring part of the entire film is the documentation of the angst felt by the Governor of Illinois, George Ryan, who wrestled with competing interests of the families of both victims and the convicted, with pressures from all sides of the political spectrum and how he ultimately resolved himself to the decision he made.

At the end, one litigant's attorney states that if justice was so flawed in Chicago, how bad might it be in other states, such as Florida (where James Joseph Richardson was railroaded for the murders of his seven children and spent 19 years in prison, including three on death row, while the true killer was ignored), North Carolina (see review for the "Trials of Darryl Hunt" on IMDb) and Texas (where George Bush and Alberto Gonzales were involved in the execution of the wrongfully convicted such as Ruben Cantu)?

Excellent documentary that's powerful 25 years after it was first released. Great use of archival footage. A needed stimulant to give the public reason to consider the questions of both nuclear war and power. This was very much an almost unsupported effort to produce a cogent critique of the dangers of reliance on nuclear power, production and its use in war. It was investigative reporting atypical of its era.

I particularly appreciated the use footage of an Army chaplain's assuring troops who were deliberately exposed to a nuclear explosion that it was a spiritual and uplifting experience. It was a prophetic statement about the current warmongering emanating from the "Christian" right against a quarter of the world's population.

This film is from the producer/director/editor of the very well received "Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill" that appeared more than two decades later.

By 1984, East Germany had been gripped for almost four decades in a Stalinist reign of terror. Since 1971, it was headed by Erich Honecker, the builder of the Berlin Wall. The Wall and its architect were toppled almost simultaneously. Wanted for war crimes, unwelcome even in Yeltsin's Russia, Honecker was extradited from Moscow to a now-unified Germany in 1992. Shortly after the onset of his murder trial, for health reasons, he was released to Chile in 1993. At the time, Chile was still protective of aging, bloody former dictators, whether U.S. or Soviet-sponsored. Like Pinochet, he died in disgrace.

In "Lives," beginning in 1984, East German secret police (Stasi) inquisitor Hauptmann (Captain) Gerd Wiesler wrestles with a similar dilemma as did Winston Smith in Orwell's "1984."

Although this film is a gripping exposition of the corruption, dehumanization and immorality of that actual former totalitarian state, in these times of Ashcroft and Gonzales, Bush and Cheney, it should be cautionary to U.S. residents as well.

Pay particular attention to the cast of characters in the "steam room" during the announcement of the fall, five years after the movie begins.

And mind what you say. Big Brother is watching you too.

Harry Cordellos is a famous, powerful and competitive athlete from San Francisco. Blind from birth, save for a very short post-op period in his teens, Harry participated in many sportsincluding distance running, as the "stoker" on a tandem bicycle, golfing, beeper ball and cross country skiing. He swam the Golden Gate and from Alcatraz to San Francisco. Harry even tried hang gliding, back in the days of tarps stretched over bamboo! Harry earned a Master's degree at San Francisco State in recreation and worked as an information telephone specialist for the Bay Area Rapid Transit system.

This film is a documentary shot during the famously difficult "Dipsea" cross country race across Mt. Tamalpais, from Mill Valley to Stinson Beach, north of San Francisco. Guided by Mike Restani, his frequent training, racing and swimming partner, Harry is seen over more difficult stretches of the course. Some running scenes were added with participation of frequent participants in the annual race.

This inspirational film should be a standard in the film library of support services for the differentially-abled and for distance runners as well.

I did my best to watch this two hour fiasco. It combined the awful special effects and plot of the original "Blob," with an execrable boosting of the (outstanding in the original) screenplay of "Runaway Train." The only explanation for this movie is that someone needed to take a huge tax deduction and figured they'd combine it with a shot at hosting a casting couch. What an incredible stinker! Lou Diamond Phillips is anxious to show us why he will take any part, no matter how bad. Barry Corbin continues his career as a typecast creep, a U.S. Senator from Texas and plays it well. He should next do the lead role in the story of Trent Lott or Jesse Helms. The women in this flick all seem to have gotten their roles as consolation prizes in the Fay Wray Memorial screaming contest. Special effects are unbelievably bad. H.S. kids in film class in North Dakota could have done a better job. The writers must have pulled a heist at the cliché bank to accumulate this many. I couldn't watch any more without being forced to sit in the Clockwork Orange chair. I have no idea how it ended, except obviously, 119 minutes too late. Ugh! Caveat emptor.

Young radicals come in to organize a factory, which the company resists. The company stooge, Lulu is an older, super-competent machinist, the person whose production sets the company's impossible standard for the rest of the workers. He gets so upset and distracted as a result of the alienation of his peers, he cuts a finger off. The company abandons him as he recuperates, and he joins the struggle of the workers and the radicals who've come to organize them. The student and radical activists eventually get distracted by a new campaign, abandoning the workers in the battle they helped organize. It should be shown to all community organizers to help create respect for those on whom they depend for support of progressive initiatives.

Hilarious, though unfortunately takes itself seriously. (I hope Steven Seagal doesn't come looking for me for this review.) Alaskan stoners who were actually familiar with the bush watched it just for the laughs. A great ethnic Alaskan Native cast including Japanese, Chinese, Samoan, Plains Indians, etc. There actually are some indigenous Alaskans in roles as extras. Seagal asks his Chinese co-star, "Can you ride a horse?" "Of course," she says, or something like that, "I'm an Indian." Almost nothing fits, even the scenery. This movie is amazingly consistent. The plot, acting, direction, locations, screenplay, stunts, etc., are all equally ridiculous.