JFK - 4 Stars (Must see)
Woah! I watched this last night and I'm still thinking about and puzzling over this whole thing. I don't normally go in for conspiracy theories. I know a couple people who are into these things like the U.S government being behind 9/11 or how stone masons influenced history or some such things. Probably a decade ago, FOX ran a special about how the moon landing was believed to be faked and the evidence for it. But then, they ran another special soo after of people refuting the evidence of the conspiracy theorists and that evidence was much greater and superior in my mind that I dismissed the conspiracy of it being faked. From this and other examples, I'm a pretty big skeptic when it comes to believing in conspiracy stuff. As such, I've never paid much attention to the JFK assassination conspiracies. But man, after watching this, I have reasonable doubt that Oswald was alone.
The movie is an account of Jim Garrison, a district attoney in New Orleans, who starts looking into the JFK findings after a conversation he has with a senator brings up a troubling idea about it. This leads him and his firm to start their investigation into the event as they pick through evidence and witnesses and find more questions and odd happenings with those involved. At one point, Garrison tells his team they are through the looking glass and you definitily get the sense that you are falling into the rabbit hole with them as the questions and examination of the evidence begins to pile on leading into different directions. I watched the director's cut version which was almost the 3 and half hours long but there were only a couple moments where I glanced at the time on DVD player. The movie keeps you engrossed and is very well paced that time flies by.
Despite approaching the movie with skepticism for things presented, I had to admit by the end that there were some very good questions and arguments presented that leave me with doubt about it being Oswald only. I'm not sure there are any good counterarguments for some of them or not. I'm still not that highly invested to start searching more into it but I'd be willing to consider them and hear them. Regardless, the movie does a fantastic job in really going through and highlighting a lot of possible theories and ideas and just explaining the whole murky situation and making it clear. The answer as to why it happened given by Mr. X certainly feels like it has a lot of truth to it. It's interesting to see just how Kennedy was so dispised by a lot of people. Watching shows like Mad Men, he comes off as a revered figure and for many he was but he also had a lot of bitter detractors.
Even if the film is wrong or nothing is ever fully solved about the situation in the future, I do applaud the film for bringing up and asking so many questions on things about the event that most other shows or media never seem to bring up or acknowledge about it. There's usually two sides to every story so its interesting to see for once what the other side on this story entails and is made up of. Technically, the film is great. Great editing, great use of interspersed black and white shots, the score is well done and top notch directing to keep everything straight and well explained and propelling the story forward. The only thing that didn't work for me was the bits of Garrison and how this quest for answers affected his family. They were never shown that much to be invested in them and are far less interesting than the JFK mystery. Still, highly recommended. Best film I've seen since Her and maybe even better than that.