Reviewing Movies

If there's anything that becomes apparent over the course of this movie it's that the casualties in a case such as this are not confined to the perpetrator's victims. When an investigation stretches on for years and decades those who become obsessed with it and the friends and family who surround them are every bit as much victims. The perpetrator can be interpreted as a victim as well though not a sympathetic one. Given the furor that surrounded this case one can understand the motives of the survivor who dropped out of sight but the loss of his witness hurt the case. That the case remains unsolved to this day leaves a void that is not typical of "Hollywood Endings."

Many of the actors who appear here are so altered in appearance I had to check the credits to recognize them. Dermot Mulroney in particular, entering his mid-forties, looks distinguished as the captain with frosting hair.

Another prominent under-current in this movie is the tension between the public's right to know and the need for police to play their cards close to their vests to protect critical evidence that may eventually make or break the case. By playing the press and television this perpetrator craftily complicates the task of law enforcement and the hundreds of copycats and red-herring witnesses bombard police with useless time-consuming dead leads. Turf wars and the failure to share information between various law-enforcement agencies did nothing to help the investigation. The sad thing is that such jurisdictional disputes still hamper law enforcement to this day. The idea that a newspaper cartoonist came close to solving the case of a serial killer or that he uncovered clues that eluded police does not paint law enforcement in a good light.

The ensemble cast do a reasonable job of portraying the process of putting out a newspaper and the plodding nature of a police investigation without making it boring.

Nothing illustrates the candor and understanding inherent in the characters in The Waltons better than episode 11 of this season entitled the Pony Cart. When Ninety-Year-Old Cousin Martha-Corinne Walton arrives for a visit and starts giving away her prize possessions curiosity gets aroused but Blue Ridge hospitality forbids the asking of prying questions even when the old gal's opinionated ways start wearing on her host's nerves. The delicacy with which Olivia tells her that it may be time she left epitomizes love and discretion. It is on the return journey that John-Boy learns that the cause of her visit was the fear of dying alone in an environment foreign to her. The old girl's acceptance of and resignation with the inevitability of that death enobles her as much as her feisty insistence on living life to the fullest until that end comes. Indeed her final death throes occur while she is enthusiastically picking flowers in the middle of a field of daisies. The camera cuts from that scene to the wooden marker beside her husband's in the skyline state park where John Walton Jr is tending her grave.

It's been ten years since this series debuted on television and the actors look young, awkward, and their clothing styles dated. David Boreanaz may have captured the glamour and the spin-off series but for pure hunk factor and screen time my money is on Nicholas Brendon, stutter and all. I'd not known til just now that Xander was short for Alexander. For the sheer size of him the role he plays shows a remarkable lack of physicality but unlike Michael Landes in Lois & Clark who was replaced after season one because he out-hunked Dean Cain the star, Nicholas gets to hang around for the entire run. As the slayer's handler Anthony Head plays the unflappable tweedy English scholar to perfection.

This is a high-concept teenage angst kind of show played with a high school as backdrop. It takes considerable suspension of disbelief to follow this show as the body count rises and no one seems to be particularly disturbed by it.

Picked up a DVD copy of Stanley Kubrick's 1987 Viet Nam epic and was disappointed to discover that it contains nothing but the basic movie with zero extras--at least it was a decent transfer. The movie depicts the dehumanizing experience that is basic training. In my estimation no individual should be granted the kind of power over the life of other human beings that a drill sergeant is apparently given; symbolically this one gets what he deserves when the fat boy snaps.

Abruptly we find ourselves in Vietnam. Joker, the war correspondent, played by Matthew Modine, is anxious to see action and as the adage goes watch what you ask for lest you get it. Adam Baldwin plays a gung-ho trigger-happy hard ass. The vent for any frustrating situation seems to be the firing of an automatic weapon, whether or not a legitimate target is in view or not. Seeing bullets sprayed around the landscape like water from a hose at a high school car wash makes death by friendly fire extremely comprehensible. Arliss Howard; an actor I've always liked who always seems to have one of those roles that makes one say--I forgot he was in that one; plays Cowboy--an allusion to the fact that he's from Texas but lacks the height one would expect from 'everything in Texas is larger than life'. In fact everyone is referred to by a nickname--again reinforcing the notion of anonymity that seems to prevail. Even the enemy has a nick name--Charley--and the average grunt looks sidelong at anyone whose skin has a yellow cast and eyes are slanted. Though when it comes to sexual gratification business is business. The movie ends with the troops marching to a rest area singing the Mickey Mouse Club Theme epitomizing the frustration at a war that seems pointless and the joy of having survived it.