Parkland

CiDeRmAn

Went to see this last night.
Very very imprssed although the action movie junkie who came with dozed off during it.
Wonderful performances all round, a compact running length, and full of characters not caricatures, as Stones JFK was.
It's not fair I suppose because while that movie was a conspiracy theory with a budget enough to seduce the audience this film deals in at least a more harrowing and somehow less flag waving portrayal of a nation in trauma and the beginnings of grief.
Well worth seeing.

constitutionus

Have to admit this is one of the occasions where a bit of PR has actually worked on me.


im sick to death of all this bollocks about JFK thats saturating the airwaves lately and had no intention of going to see this as i'd put it down on a cash in on that hysteria. but hearing the director on a few of the radio stations this week and his description of what he wanted to do with this has convinced me its not just some flagwaving nonsence and genuinely got me interested.

will prob go sometime next week.

Irish Aris

I saw it last night too, and I found it quite good.
Can't compare it directly to JFK (which I didn't like anyway. . .but then again I don't like most of Oliver Stone's films).
This is a story about specific people that were caught in the spin of JFK's assassination.
The editing seemed a bit chaotic in the beginning, but as the story unfolded and I got a better feeling of the characters, made sense.
As expected, with so many characters is difficult to have a memorable performance by an actor (I reckon only Robert Altman could do that), but I will give a nod to Paul Giamatti.

One to watch - even if you miss it on the cinema, give it a try when is out on DVD.

The Dom

Seen it last night also.

Wasn't expecting much but thoroughly enjoyed it. Felt like one of those great TV made movies. The acting was excellent throughout and the pace of the film was really consistent. Really emotional in parts also, parts which you wouldn't necessarily think would be.

You don't really learn a great deal more about the assassination, and maybe it poses more questions than it answers, but you feel more bestowed with a sense of what it must have been like for those on the ground that day and the few days in the aftermath.

Good film.

Baked.noodle

I wasn't impressed. There seemed to be too much drama for the sake of it. People shouting at each other in nearly every scene and being overly emotional. It didn't put forward anything new and focused only on the immediacy of the event without a wider context. I was disappointed.

The Dom

Baked.noodle wrote: »

..only on the immediacy of the event without a wider context.

It's called Parkland for a reason though and the director assumes (rightly so in my opinion) that the viewer already has knowledge of the wider context.

Baked.noodle

Parkland hospital did feature a lot in this film, but this didn't stop it straying out of the operating theatre to some degree.

constitutionus

well had a rare second visit to the cinema this week (as its bloody miserable out) and chose this.

i thought it was brilliant !

im NOT a JFK fan. truth is im sick to death of the fawning thats been going on in the media but i found this wonderfully engrosing. the little stuff like what happened with oswalds brother and how zapruders life changed on the back of his film . its all things i either didnt know or never thought of.

the complelte lack of "social media/ 24hr news" too. im old enough to remember a time without that but its still throws you to see no one have a clue as to why kenendy is coming to the hospital. its actually kinda shocking to see just how clueless the secret service were but then again we are talking about lone nutter and its virtually impossible to stop that.

TBH though the kennedys stuff is really incidental. it couldve been a fictional world leader and it'd work just as well as this is really all about how those events impact on the people and security forces involved. i thought the girl that played jackie was brillant. i dont think she actually had a line in the film but she got across the distress and incomprehension of the events very well.

8/10.

really glad i went to see it and itll be a class little film for the telly in the future cause at an hour and a half it doesnt waste any screentime. also fun to see some familiar faces from telly that i just cant quite name. im sure your man from ally mcbeal (billy?) is in it, along with a few others (one of the nurses and one of the secret service lads jumped out to me too.)

no complaints on the acting front.

IvaBigWun

I have been very much into everything JFK related over the past 2 weeks so I thought Id give this a go.

The short version is this would be a reasonable HBO film, even a good one. But to stretch that premise to a full cinema release is a bit of a joke. Its running time of just 75 minutes leans far more into "TV movie" territory and its American distributors seemed to agree. It was given a very limited cinema run and then pushed straight to Blu Ray and DVD after just a month!

There are far better JFK films on YouTube and they're free

LuckyLloyd

Ah yeah, it was light stuff in terms of scale and scope. Still engaging, an interesting enough slant with some strong performances.