Rating: 
Summary: ABYSSMAL!
Review: JFK, Oliver Stone's supposed masterpiece about the Kennedy assassination, probes the abyss of nonsensical conspiracy theory and never emerges from the black hole. Forty years after one of the darkest days in US history, facts now show how poorly done Stone's movie was from a fact standpoint. In November of 2003, the week of the fortieth anniversary of Kennedy's death in Dallas, Peter Jennings tackled every pillar upon which Stone had based his arguments for conspiracy and totally wiped them out. Oswald a poor shot? Nonsense! Oswald achieved marksman status in the US Marine Corps. Not enough time to get off three shots? Rubbish! Jennings' report clearly demonstrates that three shots were more than doable. The final fatal shot came from the front and right? Hardly! Never mind which way Kennedy's body falls in the Zapruder film. Ballistics is the only science that can be trusted here, along with facts from Kennedy's autopsy. Autopsy X-rays of Kennedy's skull definitively show that the point of impact was from behind and above and not from the front. The spot on the back of Kennedy's head could not have been hit by a shot from the grassy knoll unless conspiracy theorists are claiming a "magic bullet" of their own that hung in midair then turned sharply to the right in order to enter Kennedy's head from the proper trajectory. Pristine bullet? Magic bullet? Secret meetings with conspiratorial assassins? Jack Ruby working in a supposed conspiracy? Fiction! Pure unadulterated fiction! Stone's skills as a gifted moviemaker are there in JFK in rich abundance but he falls into the hole when it comes to history. Douglas McAllister
Rating: 
Summary: JFK
Review: Sorry about the re-write of my review of this film and DVD --- but this is the last revision. Let me start off by saying that I'm not much on film critics. I'm certainly not trying to be one by coming on here and giving my two-cents. However, I do read Roger Ebert's movie reviews, and I try to choose some of the movies from his favorites. Now, most of the time, this never works. But in the case of Oliver Stone's JFK, I agree 100%. It is one of the best films of the 1990's. There I said it. Onto the movie. The movie's screenplay is really written from two books. One entitled 'Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy' (by Jim Marrs) and the other 'On the Trail of the Assassins' (by Jim Garrison). Now to say that this is 100% factual is crazy, but the simple fact of the matter is that we DO NOT know exactly who killed Kennedy (I believe Oswald was involved, but at a lower level) and the facts are that Oswald was shooting from behind the President and if you've watched the Abraham Zapruder film you'll see Kennedy's head go back when the fatal head-shot hit him. Now COMMON SENSE PEOPLE if you're shooting from behind, the impact from the bullet is going to send your head forward --- NOT BACKWARDS. I've just got a High School Diploma and I got enough sense to know that. To say that were NOT a conspiracy is just plain crazy. Four bullets accounted for --- only one riffle --- the only way this assassignation was done was with the help of at least one other person! COMMON SENSE AGAIN! It aggervates me that some people are still living in their fantasy world and don't want to face the truth, but I thinks it's vital for our country to know what really happened --- WE OWE IT TO JOHN KENNEDY. Back to the film, I think Oliver Stone captures exactly how America feels about this subject, even today --- that we're still saddened and some still mourning over the loss of a President who (if lived and served two terms as President) would've gotten out soldiers out of Vietnam about a decade earlier and imagine all the lives that would still be in this world. Any time I'm sitting around watching a war film on the Vietnam War, I feel the pain of those who have lost their loved ones. Oliver Stone ensembles an amazing cast headlined by Kevin Costner and his co-stars include -- Tommy Lee Jones, Sissy Spacek, Gary Oldman, Kevin Bacon, Joe Pesci, Donald Sutherland, John Candy, Jack Lemon, Walter Matthau, Vincent D'Onofrio, Michael Rooker, Wayne Knight, Laurie Metcalf and Jay O. Sanders. Onto the DVD --- If you own the 'Oliver Stone Collection' Director's Cut of this movie, DO NOT buy this copy. It's the exact same material including the commentary track! If you haven't bought a copy of JFK on DVD then I'd pick it up. The commentary track alone is worth the extra cash. Not to mention the Deleted/Alternate Scenes and the Documentary With "X". The Director's Cut contains 17 minutes of un-seen footage, as well. This is a must! I don't want to ruin it for JFK fans, but if you haven't seen the Director's Cut, then I suggest you do so now! Awsome scene where Garrison is met at the Airport and --- well, you'll just have to pick up a copy of this to see. The DVD transfer is excellent as well as the sound (you don't have to hold on to the remote and wait for one scene to out-power the next --- sound-wise). One of the most provocative, mind-bending films ever released, this film will make you beg for more!
Rating:
Summary: Family snapshot...
Review: It would be real cozy if Oswald had just been a disturbed individual who didn't get enough love and attention as a child, as in the Peter Gabriel song Family Snapshot, but alas, that might be an over-simplification. Whatever you think about the Conspiracy/No Conspiracy battle, anybody should be able to appreciate this stunning movie, as a movie, which features a performance by Kevin Costner that is basically as good as it gets. I won't repeat the rightful praise heaped on the movie by other reviewers, except to say that every good thing you have heard about this masterpiece is true. As for the Conspiracy itself, the movie contains a few elements that may have arguably been discredited but on the whole, it asks a lot of questions that have never been satisfactorily answered. After the shameful whitewash attempt by author Gerald Posner, 'Case Closed' (gotta love his arrogance) JFK is like a breath of fresh air. Personally, I didn't like or trust Kennedy, so I don't have a political axe to grind by aligning myself with the Pro-Conspiracy side. It's just that there is enough questionable data to make any reasonable person doubt the official explanations. Gerald Posner's utterly laughable 'explanation' of the second shot as being a reflex action, in which JFK's head suddenly jerked backwards, is all you need to hear to know that the level of intelligence of the anti-Conspiracy side is enough to give Homer Simpson a superiority complex. Olly Stone has got so much right here that the actual fine detail is almost irrelevant. He has gone a long way towards proving that a complex Conspiracy did in fact exist, and that's without including some of the most extreme (though not ridiculous) theories. Just enjoy JFK as a piece of Art, because thanks to Stone, Costner and a stunning cast, that is what it is.
Rating: 
Summary: Relatively good film, but really misleading.
Review: I'm no English language native speaker but I can sense that Kevin Costner's accent in the movie is outrageously phony, not to say funny. I didn't see the picture at the time of its release, but in any case one merit has to be credited to Oliver Stone, and it is to have revived interest in the affair and forwarded the investigations. As I understand it -and I have read a lot- nothing has really been unearthed that favors the particular conspirary theory here given lavish treatment. In view of a more recent Stone film, "Comandante", I think that there is little doubt where his sympathies lie nowadays. Castro himself, I remember, has said often that "he could have reached an understanding with Kennedy", which I take as a step to support the thesis of this film and a reinterpretation of history. I find weaknesses in the movie like the rather corny familiar scenes. Nontheless, the conspiracy theory, the Garrison theory, is set out with -I would say- wicked skill. The assassination of President Kennedy was in fact a very shocking affair that has reverberated through generations -I didn't live it but it has come to me with strength later, even not being an American-. The fact that Lee Harvey Oswald was this kind of amazingly outlandish personality, who spun himself a web of intrigue and mystery, the fact that he denied the whole thing, has given rise to this conspirarcy theories -in fact, they come up almost always with magnicides, i.e. Martin Luther King, the attempted assasination of Pope John Paul II, etc.-. They are not to be dismissed lightly in any case. But my impression about Lee Harvey Oswald is that he was a lone killer. Too much fits. Of course, conspirarcy theorists would'nt be satisfied for this: if too much fits is it because someone has made it fit, deceptively. But consider the mere innuendo and the heterogeneity of the "clues" contributed. Everything that merely casts a shadow of a doubt on anything -from bullets trajectories to hints in geopolitics, etc.- is put into the account of "conspiracy". Dozens, hundreds of persons would be in the secret, and none has "squealed". Really, personally I don't buy it. So, if Oswald was a lone sociopath and Castro sympathiser, and killed Kennedy having the occasion, the means and the motive -both retaliating for the American attempts to overthrow Fidel and to gain notoriety for himself, or rather fulfill his sociopathic urges-... then this film distorts the reality, acts as a vehicle of propaganda of a certain kind... I don't say that this film has no value as entertainment, only that it is -in my particular view- an agit-prop film, and it has values alike to those that a Riefensthal docummentary has. I'm afraid that it slanders a number of persons who don't have means of bringing up their cases in an Hollywood superproduction. So much for the "great capital" "interest" in silencing anything.
Rating:
Summary: landmark movie but flawed
Review: The problem with this film is the character of Jim Garrison and especially the final scene where's he realises he's bundled the Clay Shaw prosecution and tries to get a 'guilty' verdict by making a speech about American Citizenship instead. Shoddy lawman if you ask me. He's not much of a father either. His family sit in the courtroom at the end of the movie looking up to Garrison like he's some kind of hero and as if he was right to ignore them and treat them badly but he loses the case because of his own amateurishness not because of any judicial conspiracy. Not much of a pay-off for his kids who've had to amuse themselves for a couple of years while their dad has his head buried in books. I can't help thinking if it had been Atticus Finch he would have won the court case -and- been good to his family. On the evidence Stone gives, it is possible to see Garrison as a courageous investigator but not as a rigorous or accomplished lawyer. This for me definitely takes away from any of the points he's trying to make. The Donald Sutherland theory is a little bit too much to swallow as well. Most of the other people who have written about the JFK murder stop short of implicating Lyndon Johnson. It's a shame because it's obviously such a landmark movie, accomplished in so many ways and Stone ruins it by staying so true to the District Attorney. Maybe this was part of the book deal but I would have preferred to see Stone be a bit harder on him.
Rating: 
Summary: A Well Made Fictional Account
Review: The shame regarding this movie is that Oliver Stone purposely put inaccurate items in it. They weren't "mistakes" or literary
license, they were just lies and biased "story" telling. I have to admit it was a fairly well made movie , but it is just propaganda. It would take too long to go over all the things that are wrong or made up. However, I will use one. The main premise of Stone, is that JFK was going to pull out of Vietnam and therefore the "Military Industrial Complex" had to kill him. Stone shows JFK in an interview stating that the fight in Southeast Asia was "Vietnam's problem not ours". Stone uses this to show that Kennedy was going to pull out of Vietnam. What he DOESN'T show you is that later in the SAME interview, Kennedy states that we can not allow communism to spread and must hold the line against China and the Soviet Union. This is what LBJ did and Kennedy most likely would have done the same, especially since he's the one that sent the U.S. in there in the first place. There are dozens of similar items through out the movie that
Stone "conveniently" omits from the movie. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the viewers of the movie know very little about the details of the assassination and will take this movie as truth and not a fictionalized verson of real events which is what it is.... You must watch this movie as a well made mystery having VERY little to do with the real world. And to have a good view of what happened in Dallas that day needs a lot more research. And a good start is Gerald Posner's "Case Closed", it's a very well written documented researched book. And this despite the previous philistine reviewer that knocked the book, some people will only close their eyes to the truth. Just remember, to take the Stone's JFK movie seriously you have to believe that the following groups were involved in the
assassination of the President with NO ONE talking in 40+ years: Secret Service, FBI, CIA, Dallas Police, Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, along with support people at all levels of government. That would be tens of thousands of people with no one admitting anything, no deathbed confessions, no anonimous submission to a newpaper or the news ...NOTHING !!! Nixon couldn't keep a secret within his cabinet but thousands of people keep the secret to the crime of the century...... How ridiculous is that...?
Rating:
Summary: Lies, Lies and More Lies!
Review: If you want the truth, watch the Discovery Channel or the History Channel. They've done some excellent documentaries on the subject. The only thing this movie gets right was the fact that JFK was shot in Dallas. The rest is a bunch of giant lies! Stone should be locked up for passing off this fiction as truth. And what's most unfortunate about it is that young people will believe this nonsense as what really happened. It's not! Lies! Lies and more lies!
Rating:
Summary: Frightening, disturbing
Review: Oliver Stone's "JFK" is a brave, powerful, radical film. It's also scary as hell. The movie explores our collective national nightmare about the assassination of the President and its potential links to Castro, the Mob, the CIA, and of course Vietnam and the Military-Industrial Complex. It does not merely suggest that a great evil befell our country that horrible day in 1963, but shouts it from the rooftops. How Stone ever got this movie made is beyond me. But I'm glad he did. "JFK" is first and foremost a movie. It is not a documentary and it is not journalism. I agree with critics and others who find its value in its willingness to confront such a difficult subject and exhort its audience to question authority, use their "eyes and ears and good sense." Did Oliver Stone convince me that Lee Harvey Oswald did not, in fact, act alone -- that none other than Lyndon Johnson and military defense contractors were in fact behind the assassination? Not necessarily. But this movie intrigued me and scared me and got me to thinking, and that is really the highest compliment I can pay a Hollywood film. Most movies are interested in only one thing: money. This one is interested in ideas, enlightenment, and seeking out the truth. That alone makes "JFK" a rarity. Besides all that, it's a terrific piece of filmmaking, period. I'm not a big fan of Oliver Stone, but what he pulled off here is remarkable. "JFK" feels like a combination of Hitchcock and Spielberg, with maybe a little Brian De Palma and Frank Capra thrown in. From the photography to the sound to the editing, it's a masterwork, vivid and alive. Though there is a lot of dialogue -- and two scenes that amount to soliloquies of Shakespearean depth -- Stone never bogs down, never loses steam, never loses his train of thought. The whole movie builds up to a climactic courtroom sequence that pulls all the threads together into a picture of what MIGHT have happened in Dallas that day. It then leaves us to think, and ask questions, and keep our own eyes open. I want to mention three of the actors. First, Tommy Lee Jones, who is seductively evil as Clay Shaw/Bertrand. He deserved to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar that year, but of course there's no justice in that ceremony. Second, Joe Pesci, panicky and devilish as David Ferrie -- here's a whirlwind performance that dwarfs his fast-talking work in "Lethal Weapon 2." Finally, Kevin Costner, turning in a powerful portrayal of Jim Garrison. Costner is in almost every scene, sometimes just watching and listening, but always credible in a role that took a lot of guts for him to play (after all, he is Stone's mouthpiece for a lot of highly unpopular ideas). Anyone who doubts Costner's acting ability has obviously never seen this film. There are disturbing moments, many of them highlighted by pungent dialogue that gets right to the point. Donald Sutherland gets the movie's most gripping scene, walking Costner through all of "the facts" behind the assassination (it's a brilliant scene -- Garrison almost literally shuts down, he's so overwhelmed by what he's hearing). Lines like "subtle as a cockroach crawling across a white carpet," "it's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma" and "people like you just walk between the raindrops" have a strangely chilling effect; simple lines that cast the drama in a sinister light. Look, I realize that Stone altered some of the facts to fit his cinematic story (Ferrie, for instance, did not die under such suspicious circumstances). I know that the movie is not unbiased -- that it's a bald representation of the ideas of the man behind it. So what? Here is a movie that takes more risks than any other, before or since. It has flaws, but they are minor. "JFK" was the best film of 1991 and stands as one of my favorites ... disturbing though it may be.
Rating: 
Summary: A good movie showing an attempt to solve the mystery
Review: JFK provides quite a dramatic viewpoint of several conspiracy theories surrounding the assination of John F. Kennedy. First of all, I'd like to say that I know basically nothing about the actual details of the assination, so I can't say for sure how much of this movie is acurate to the historical fact. However, I can say that it features a stunning preformance by Kevin Costner as investigator Jim Garrison and the movie pays much on the drama of the further investigation of the death of the president. Overall, I thought that the movie opened America's eyes to the possibility of conspiracys surrounding the government. The depiction of Oswald as being a "patsy" is one of the focal points of the film and it weaves a web of conspiracies involving Cuban guerrilla influences, Communism, and even questions about the American government's role in Kennedy's death. The movie cultivates with the trial of Shaw. The trial scene is where the intensity of the movie reaches its climax and although its depiction really does show how little of an actual case Garrison had on Shaw, it passionately attempts to unravel some of the mysteries involving the death of the president. "The magic bullet" evidence really makes you believe that there has to have been at least some cover up of the details involving that famous day in Texas. If anything, this movie brings the case into the spotlight, even if it will remain to be shadowed by some doubt. There are, however, some problems with the movie. Other reviewers have stated that many facts have been juggled in order to create a believable story, and I'm sure that this is true. It is unlikely that a number of the cut scences actually took place in their entiretity. Also, some of the "star studed actors" that were featured in the film seemed to be playing roles that were not suited well for them. Joe Pesci seemed miscast and John Candy's character was almost laughable in such a serious movie. Finally, the movie is about three hours long and seems to drag in some places. I haven't seem the un-cut version, but I can't really see why the extra material in the directors cut is really needed. So many conspiracies are tossed around that after awhile, some of them to disprove each other. Overall, JFK may not be most perfect movie and probably did bend the facts a little, but it is worth seeing at least once. If you don't want to wade through the whole movie, skip to the trial scence because it is the best part of the film.
Rating:
Summary: JFK (Director's Cut)
Review: I'm surprised, after 40 years, that so much effort is still made to discredit Jim Garrison's investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy and Oliver Stone's telling movie "JFK". Peter Jennings and ABC made a "heroic" effort to convince viewers that Oswald was a "lone nut" assassin. Even PBS sold out with their "Frontline" program, and a couple of others, about the JFK assassination. As someone who has studied the JFK assassination, as an avocation, since 1968, I highly recommend Oliver Stone's "JFK" as an excellent starting point to understanding why Kennedy was assassinated. Stone had to abbreviate the story. How could any film cover everything that happened from before Kennedy took the oath of office in January of 1961 until the trial of Clay Shaw in 1969 in a couple of hours? It isn't possible unless some artistic license is taken. An example is "X", the mysterious military colonel, who was based on more than one person but primarily on Col. L. Fletcher Prouty (who wrote the excellent book "JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy". The conversation, in the film "JFK", between "X" and District Attorney Jim Garrison, never took place. But it precisely summed up events which happened over a long period of time in the planning and execution of the assassination. If not for these kinds of artistic license a movie spanning nearly nine years would have to be several years long to include all details exactly as they happened. The jury in the Clay Shaw trial believed there was a conspiracy, they just didn't have the proof they needed to convict Shaw. And it was no wonder they couldn't. The FBI, CIA and many other government entities did everything they could to thwart Garrison's investigation. His offices were bugged, "volunteers" removed stacks of documents, The FBI threatened his investigators, witnesses were murdered, Governors refused to extradite key witnesses, the judge wouldn't allow the police officer who booked Clay Shaw to testify that Shaw said he used the alias Clay Bertrand when being booked ... no D.A. could win a case under those circumstances. Even Johnny Carson, on NBC's "The Tonight Show", attacked Garrison over national television. Garrison did a remarkable job, under the circumstances, of coming close to solving the assassination. Garrison's book "On The Trail of the Assassins: My Investigation and Prosecution of the Murder of President Kennedy" illustrates exactly what he was up against in bringing Clay Shaw to trial. If you can find this book buy it. Why is the Kennedy assassination of any importance 40 years later? You have to understand what happened then to understand what has happened since. Why would the government, the media, authors, television program producers and others want to make you belive a lone nut assassin killed our President? Why did so many witnesses die so quickly? Why was evidence destroyed and modified? Why was Oswald silenced by Jack Ruby? Why was Oswald given Russian language training while in the Marines, sent to work at the largest CIA military base in Asia, then allowed to "defect" to Russia? Why would our government stand by and do nothing when Oswald tells the U.S. Embassy that he wants to give up his U.S. citizenship and says he is going to give Russia secrets about our U2 flights? Why would he be allowed to do that? Why, when he wanted to come back to the U.S., was he promptly given his passport, never debriefed, and even given travel money by a CIA cover group? Why wouldn't he be charged with treason? Why did Oswald pretend to be pro-Castro working out of the office of Guy Banister, a private investigator who was former ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) and former head of the Chicago office of the F.B.I.? Why would Oswald hang out in a place within a couple of blocks of the Secret Service, the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and the O.N.I. offices in New Orleans if he had truly defected to Russia? Was Oswald being set up to be the "patsy" for the assassination? Why didn't the Warren Commission take Jack Ruby to Washington, D.C. where he said he could tell the truth? Why did Ruby suddenly contract a virulent form of colon cancer in his lungs just after being told he would get a re-trial? He claimed he was being injected with cancer and he died within a couple of months. Why would JFK's brain disapper from the National Archives along with autopsy photos? Why did LBJ have the limousine flown to Ford Motor Company and the windshield with a bullet hole removed and destroyed, as well as the carpet and parts of the interior replaced destroying that evidence. These, and hundreds of other questions, will come up as you watch "JFK" and do some searching on the internet.
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