Reviews

If you're thinking of watching this because you loved The Crown, don't. They have nothing in common. The Crown was written by people who understood the era into which Queen Elizabeth II was born. I'm afraid The Empress was created by people who have absolutely no historical sense whatever. It's like Kardashians Meet the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The acting is horrible. The writing is horrible. (We watched in English. Maybe the dialog is less banal in German.)

The 2016 Victoria with Jenna Coleman (about Queen Victoria and Prince Albert) has a similar kind of plot, takes place around the same time, and is MUCH better.

We watched two and a half episodes and had to quit.

I'm not sure why I gave it 2 stars. The actress who plays Elisabeth is pretty. And I guess I'm glad I watched it on Netflix. If I'd had to pay for it on Amazon, I'd have given it the lowest possible rating.

Worst movie I've seen in a while. I am fond of de Palma: Dressed to Kill, Body Double, Untouchables, I even like Bonfire of the Vanities. But this one is a stinker. I tend to rate movies on a sliding scale where I start by asking how ambitious the film is, and then I assess how well it reaches its goal. A small film that realizes its ambitions and then some (say, Office Space) can be a 10 for me. Black Dahlia seems like an ambitious film, like it wants to be great. It's got a great director, what I assume was a decent budget and some name-brand stars. But nothing gels. No chemistry between any of the characters. I stopped watching after an hour and a half because I didn't give a darn how it ended. I did go back and force myself to watch the last half hour. Things didn't improve.

I've watched the De Niro and Dreyfuss movies a couple of times each and like them. As entertainment, Dreyfuss is better, but both are well made films, well directed, well acted. They hit the right notes for movie buffs.

But both of those movies miss the point. The point isn't that Bernie Madoff was a swindler. That's a boring story. Madoff started out selling penny stocks and in the end he was never much more than a penny-stock putz. Sure he may have been chairman of NASDAQ at one point, but if you're under the impression that putzes aren't running the world, well, God bless you.

No the permanently interesting story of the Madoff scandal is the same as the story of the Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos scandal: how they got away with it, how the people who should have known better, didn't, in fact, the folks who should have known better actively enabled the fraudsters. This movie gets that part of the story right: It's a story about the SEC. It should be clear now that the people in Washington and elsewhere who are supposed to be protecting the American people, aren't. They aren't even trying hard. And when they fail, OTHER PEOPLE's lives are destroyed but they keep getting promoted, or they move to even better-paying jobs outside government.

Warning: Watch this film after watching The Big Short and you may be inclined to cash in your retirement funds and put the money into something safe and solid like Bitcoin. (Just kidding.)

I'm not a cynic. This is just how it is, and this movie certainly demonstrates that.

Now about the other aspects of this movie: It should have been a one-hour show. Too much about Markopolos' anxieties about the danger he might be in. I'm willing to say that he was not being unreasonable. But in retrospect, he was NOT killed or assaulted, and that part of the story -- the personal and emotional effect of being a Cassandra -- is real, but can't be appreciated by any of us.

Markopolos is right: He's NOT a hero. He was a Cassandra. And Cassandra wasn't a hero. She was a prophet that no one listened to.

To state the obvious: We're not talking about The Third Man here. Or even Murder on the Orient Express. You might not want to add the Blu-ray to your permanent library. But this was satisfying light entertainment. I should add that I have never found Adam Sandler interesting or funny, but he did a completely decent job here -- even a good job. Jennifer Aniston was good too and the supporting cast of European actors carried the story forward nicely. Graded on a curve, think it's worth a solid eight star rating.

This is the short (half hour) early version of what in 2014 became the feature film 'What We Do in the Shadows'. The 2014 film is brilliant, inventive, quirky, and side-splittingly funny. But that's the later 2014 film. THIS short film shows the trio creating their characters, and so it's really a rough sketch of what later becomes a great painting. I'm pretty sure that if I'd seen this short first, I'd never have watched the feature film, and that would be sad.

So my advice is, watch the 2014 full-length film first, then watch this short to learn a little about the amazing transformations that can occur in the creative process.

Like many people I've read so much about the Kennedy Assassination that I know the names and stories and even the back stories of just about every character in this movie. And having read Bugliosi's books on the topic (both the short facts-only book on which this movie is based and also the very long, devastating thorough take-down of every conspiracy theory), I know the narrative practically the way Bugliosi presents it, minute by minute. Even so, I was gripped by this movie right from the beginning shortly before the assassination and stayed with it right to the poetic, pathetic ending where Oswald is buried in Fort Worth. At the end of the movie, I really felt wrung out.

The movie operates a bit like a Greek tragedy, not just in its tragic arc, but also in the fact that it assumes that you the viewer generally know the story. This allows it to cover a huge amount of historical ground in just 90 effectively and efficiently presented minutes of drama. It's a remarkable achievement. There's ten times more info in this short film than in Oliver Stone's ridiculous "JFK" which is twice as long.

Stone's 'JFK' indulges in some of the most unfocused teenage fantasizing ever filmed. 'Parkland' on the other hand presents without hype some aspects of the assassination story that show where the federal government did indeed fail: the failure to stop Oswald (the first of the "known wolves") and also the Secret Service's arrogant bullying of the Dallas coroner, in complete violation the governing law. If the Secret Service had followed the law instead of acting like the praetorian guard of a Roman emperor, there's a good chance that conspiracy theories could have died in the cradle as they should have. We'd never have had the questions that arose from the transportation of Kennedy's body back to Bethesda.

The other big movie I want to compare this one to is James Cameron's 'Titanic', which is as ridiculous as Stone's 'JFK.' Why oh why did Cameron, having been handed one of the most copiously documented and most dramatic stories of all time, feel the need to embellish it with an adolescent love story? The director of 'Parkland' shows much more artistic discipline not to mention better taste. He knows he's got a helluva story and he sticks very closely to it.

So this is a movie for grown-ups. In additional to being accurate history, it's a big black cup of hot drama, served up without cream or sugar. It'll certainly keep you awake.

Here's a little test that will help you decide whether to watch this flick or not.

Say you're a screenwriter. One night you lie awake in bed thinking about the classic film 'Witness for the Prosecution' with the plot by Agatha Christie, starring Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power, Elsa Lanchester and John Williams — and of course directed by Billy Wilder. You are thinking something was missing from that film, but you can't figure out what it was. Then it hits you: SEX. And not just sex, but sex and degradation. That's the ticket! A remake with more sex and degradation. That's what the world needs now.

So the next day you wake up and you make this film. Was this a good idea, or a bad idea?

If the correct answer is not obvious to you, there's a chance that you'll enjoy this movie.

I believe in grading movies on a curve. This one is not in the same class as Citizen Kane or Fargo or Some Like It Hot. Instead this is a low-budget and somewhat corny—okay, pretty corny—family film like, oh, Because of Winn-Dixie. And graded on the curve appropriate for that class, this is at least an 8 out of 10. I'll be honest, my wife is the one who ordered this from Netflix and I didn't want to see it. I had Gosford Park in the DVD tray ready to go. But my wife thought our 15-year old would enjoy Wild America more, and our daughter agreed. I was outnumbered. So we watched this film.

I didn't know anything about it. We were a good 10 minutes or more into the film before I put the family's last name (Stouffer) together with the first name of the oldest son (Marty) and realized, "Hey, I know who this kid is: It's Marty Stouffer of..." D'oh.

Anyway, I expect that the real adventures of the real Marty and his brothers weren't quite as colorful as those of the characters in the film. But there were a good combination of excitement (and from some unlikely sources, like F-14 jets dropping bombs) and genuine humor. I laughed hard again and again.

Special effects? Well, I'll just say, it ain't Jurassic Park. I think the animal props were rented from a budget prop store in Atlanta. But it didn't matter. I enjoyed the film a lot. Do what I did, get some fresh hot pizza, sit back with your spouse and a kid or two, and enjoy it yourself.