I am not very good at goodbyes

CANDLESHOE (1977)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Anytime I revisit live-action Disney flicks from the 1970's, I marvel at the warmth and good feelings that emanate from them. "Candleshoe" is easily one of the best of its ilk, an entertaining comedy-mystery for kids that can also tickle the kid in us adults too. It is that good and highly recommended.

The tomboyish Jodie Foster (no stranger to these types of movies) is Casey Brown, a plucky L.A.  orphan and consistent shoplifter who does nothing but create mischief, which includes tipping over barrels of grease oil so she can watch people slip and slide everywhere. The plot kicks in when an English con man, Harry Bundage (Leo McKern), pays off Casey's uncaring foster parents so he can use her to deceive the countess known as Lady St. Edmund (Helen Hayes), the owner of Candleshoe manor. Apparently, somewhere in the manor is a pirate's hidden fortune. If Harry and Casey can convince Edmund that Casey is her long-lost granddaughter, then the acquiring of this fortune will be a cinch as long as Casey can figure out where it is hidden. The manor itself is barely hanging on due to financial constraints, kept from the countess by Mr. Priory (David Niven, in one of his liveliest roles), the butler who affects one disguise after another to give the appearance of a full staff. Most of the legwork at the manor is done by Priory and the few orphans Edmund has taken in from a local shelter.

The low-key exuberance of "Candleshoe" is what makes it sing. The performances never scream for attention, especially Jodie Foster whom I still wish had the chance to play Nancy Drew back then. Foster was already showing that she could stand her ground with the likes of Robert De Niro in "Taxi Driver" and, here, she is simply smashing when dealing with pros like Hayes (their final scene together is sublime). Speaking of smashing...there is David Niven who makes me smile just with his very presence and he can be hysterically funny when he pretends to be a white mustachioed Colonel who has trouble mounting a horse. Helen Hayes does what she does best, appear dignified and divine with enough nuance in her diction to remind us what a class act she is. McKern ("Help!") is his blustery best in the only performance that can vaguely be called chaotic.

The finale at the manor may leave a lot to be desired yet "Candleshoe" is pure, charming, unadulterated fun. The cast, especially the kids that play the orphans, are upbeat and likable. This is the kind of harmless Disney flick that is impossible to dislike and will keep kids, and adults, glued to the screen.

Kodak Moments Developing between father and son

KODACHROME (2017)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

One of my favorite film genres is the road trip movie, especially the American Road Movie of which are far too many examples to draw from. The most recent in memory that is something of a masterpiece is Alexander Payne's seminal 2013 film, "Nebraska," which featured Bruce Dern as a codger looking to collect one million dollars from Publisher's Clearing House. He can't get to the destination by himself so he gets his son, an SNL alum (Will Forte), to drive him there. The point of the film was to expose the life Dern once had, and the future he might have left to live. "Kodachrome" is very much the same movie but with different, sadder notes to play, and we got Ed Harris as the codger and another SNL alum Jason Sudeikis playing Harris's son.

Sudeikis proves once again what a wonderfully subtle actor he is (his role as a coach in "Race" is something to see). Here he plays Matt, a dour, highly sarcastic record executive who has not signed any rock band to the record label in months. After meeting with his boss who is ready to fire him, Matt is given one last chance: sign a rock band known as the Spare 7's in 2 weeks or he is out the door. Making his life more complicated is the arrival of a personal nurse, Zooey (Elizabeth Olsen), to Matt's prick of a father, a world-class photographer, Benjamin Ryder (Ed Harris). It turns out that Benjamin is dying from liver cancer and wants to develop some old Kodachrome rolls of film at a Kansas store (the only one in the country) that is shutting down its business due to the digital age. Matt is more than reluctant to go on this trip since he downright hates his father but since the Spare 7's is performing in Chicago, which is on his itinerary to Kansas, he goes along.

Along the way, slowly but surely, Matt finds it difficult to warm up to his honest-to-a-fault father who smokes pot and loads film in his 35mm camera capturing moments along the way. Matt has an easier time warming up to Zooey, sharing their love of music and choice albums ("Live" the band being one of them, which is a hard band to warm up to) and both realizing that Benjamin's last days do not include any apologies to his own son. One scene involving Matt's aunt where Benjamin admits to an affair, angering Benjamin's brother (Bruce Greenwood, an underrated actor), is tension-filled and upsetting with no resolution. That is what I love about "Kodachrome," the film sticks to Benjamin's faults without sermonizing or moralizing - he is who he is. Ed Harris captures this man's last days without sentimentality and that is a rare thing nowadays. And yet the regret comes through and one of the last scenes between Sudeikis and Harris is a master class in channeling emotion that is unforced.

I do not think "Kodachrome" is quite in the same class as "Nebraska" but so few films are. It is a laid-back film that never forces its narrative or its characters into situations that could be formulaic. Most might see this film as something they have seen countless times before, but not usually with such sincerity and heartbreak (thanks to able direction by Canadian director Mark Raso and a tightly woven screenplay by Jonathan Tropper). As for the actors, Elizabeth Olsen is an adult actress with a magnetism that is hard to forget - her character is not quite a lost soul yet she is searching for her own reality. Ed Harris has always been a formidable presence in movies and the surprise is that Benjamin, despite his flaws as a human being and as a father who can't remember his son's birthday, shows a frail man whose regret was that he was selfish with his work and with himself. Jason Sudeikis gives a truly stunning performance of quiet rage and simmering sarcasm. There is one special visual moment that shows him sitting at his front doorstep with framed mirrors and picture frames in the background. One mirror frame shows the car with his father arriving. Considering Matt's office has no family pictures shows that reality has set in, it is high time for Matt to not be selfish either. Both men enter this trip knowing but never quite admitting that their souls need some tinkering.

Distributed by Netflix after premiering at the Toronto Film Festival in late 2017, "Kodachrome" is the kind of auspicious film that gets buried under the Superhero rubble with no viable theatrical release. Netflix did a great thing acquiring this film but it is only viewable on their streaming service. It is the dawn of a new era where even Martin Scorsese's next mob film will be directly streamed on their service as well, not to mention Orson Welles's no-longer-ill-fated 1970's film "The Other Side of the Wind." Netflix does a world of good for filmmakers lately so this is hardly an admonishment of them, only the industry that has longer-termed goals with bigger-budgeted blockbusters. "Kodachrome" is a shiny diamond in the rough that deserves a lot more attention than it is getting, just like Kodak film.

Take the Money and Run

SMALL TIME CROOKS (2000)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Original Review from 2000

Woody Allen continues to make films his own way, and that is a major feat for an artist who has yet to have a major box-office success since "Hannah and Her Sisters." I am not sure "Small Time Crooks" will change all that, but let me be the first to report that it is one of Allen's funniest and most endearing films since "Bullets Over Broadway."

Playing a loser for the first time since I can remember, Allen stars as Ray Winkler, an ill-judged bank robber married to his manicurist wife, Frenchy (Tracey Ullman). Ray has a new plan to change his life from his current dishwashing activities - to rob a bank vault by tunneling from an abandoned store's basement. The idea is that the store will be turned into a bakery and Frenchy will run it, along with her cousin, May (Elaine May). The surprise is that the cookies they sell become the talk of the town, and so successful that Frenchy and Ray become rich. Only problem is that their taste in clothes and furniture is garish at best ("Go on honey, show them your collection of leather pigs," quips Ray). Thus, Frenchy enlists the help of a British art dealer (Hugh Grant) who will teach her about class and elegance, and education. Naturally, Ray prefers the life he had and gets the impulse to steal all over again by scheming with May to get a priceless necklace.

"Small Time Crooks" made me laugh from start to finish, and I must thank the great writer-director Woody Allen (a comic genius, in my view). His sharp observations about these colorful brand of characters inspires many memorable one-liners, particularly the droll humor involving the typically relaxing charm of Hugh Grant and the high-pitched Ullman (some of it recalls the naive Annie Hall's dedication to reading more books and taking college courses). Also worth noting is the early appearance of Michael Rapaport (who was also in "Mighty Aphrodite") as a bumbling crook, John Lovitz as a possible entrepreneur who has burned down buildings to support his children's education, and the pleasant air of Elaine May's presence (she last appeared on screen in 1990's "In the Spirit") - she gives her character May a rich array of nuances and perfect comic timing. Her character begs the question - is she really smart or is she as ditsy and naive as we might think? The naysayers who feel that the 64-year-old Allen has been dealing with much younger female leads, such as Elisabeth Shue, will applaud the choice of the 60-year-old Elaine May. Frankly, this is of little importance to me - I would still love to see Allen use Sharon Stone as a lead or foil.

Scrawny Allen is as always scrawny Allen, but here he has a slight edge ("I'd like to flatten you, just once") complemented with the adoration of his wife, Frenchy, and makes his character the most magnetic he's played in some time. Tracey Ullman runs hot and cold for me, but she gets to play a trashy, talkative, sprightly woman with an affection for her husband - we somehow know that things will work out between them despite her affinity for the suave Hugh Grant.

"Small Time Crooks" is not laugh-out loud funny (though there are many sidesplitting moments but I could have done without the faux news segment) but it is smooth and refined, as we might expect post-"Crimes and Misdemeanors" or "Husbands and Wives." It is far more relaxed and kinder than Allen's early slapstick comedies such as "Take the Money and Run" or "Sleeper." I would love it if Allen returned to his more serious Bergmanesque period but as sheer entertainment and pointed humor, it is far more lively and less overstuffed than "Sweet and Lowdown" or "Celebrity." Small time business, to be sure, but you will have a grand time. 

This movie is dead enough

DRACULA: DEAD AND LOVING IT (1995)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Revised review from 1996

Funnyman Mel Brooks was at his peak with parodies of specific genres like "Blazing Saddles," "Young Frankenstein" and "Spaceballs," and the underrated gems that include "High Anxiety" and "Silent Movie." But something became amiss after "Spaceballs" when he failed to truly exploit parodying Robin Hood and his Merry Men of Sherwood in "Robin Hood: Men in Tights," a spectacularly dim and progressively unfunny movie that spent more time mocking Errol Flynn's version than Costner's version. Still, nothing in "Men in Tights" compares to the terminal stupidity of "Dracula: Dead and Loving It," using the absurdly cast Leslie Nielsen as Count Dracula mimicking Bela Lugosi's iconic Hungarian accent. Using Nielsen in this film is useful only in reminding us how much better he was in "The Naked Gun" parodies. It would've been wonderful to cast Frank Langella, who played the Count in the 1979 "Dracula" version, because utilizing Langella's nuanced comic gifts (harkening all the way back to Langella in Mel Brooks' own "Twelve Chairs") could've given this film a necessary lift from its own muted and deadly boring comic rhythms. 

The story in this film closely follows Lugosi's 1931 classic as Dracula parades into England with insect-eating Renfield (Peter MacNicol - an actor unsuitable for comedy as proven with "Ghostbusters II") at his side. Mel Brooks plays a thick-accented Van Helsing, the sleepwalking Harvey Korman plays Dr. Seward and where is Cloris Leachman as Frau Blucher when you really need her? And why bring in Steven Weber and Amy Yasbeck from TV's "Wings" when they are given nothing comedic to do? A sure sign of comic desperation: the movie has repetitive scenes of geysers of blood shooting up from corpses. Once, twice, three times too many.

Mel Brooks does pepper the screen with a couple of highlights that are bound to be missed. Most notable is a subtle nod to Scorsese's "The Age of Innocence" but nothing comes of it (it involves opera glasses). I liked the Anne Bancroft cameo where she plays a demanding gypsy which is a particular nod to Maria Ouspenskaya from Lon Chaney's "The Wolf Man." But are audiences going to get the in-jokes and references to Christopher Lee and the myriad Hammer Horror films? I doubt it. Jokes targeting Coppola's version of the good old Count are abysmal. Dracula's ridiculous hair net is actually a...hat! Ha!

"Dracula: Dead and Loving it" basically retells the 1931 film's story without much comic ingenuity - it practically plays it straight. Mel Brooks has gone on to producing some of his best films into musicals. This last directorial effort is splashy blood gags and little else.

Simon Templar as Unintentional Farce

THE SAINT (1997)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Original Review from April, 1997

There is no doubt in my mind that 1997's "The Saint" is a complete disaster - it is preposterous, predictable to the core, insanely over-the-top and downright embarrassing. Somehow, though, I enjoyed the heck out of it because it is the latest entry in the least understood movie genre known as the Guilty Pleasure genre or the "I hate to admit it, but I liked it" genre. Val Kilmer has a few of those in his repertoire, and this movie is certainly among them.

Based on the lively Roger Moore  TV series of the late 60's, it actually resembles Val Kilmer's own intentional parody of spy films, the hysterical "Top Secret." Kilmer plays Simon Templar, a high-tech thief who can steal almost any valuable from any high-security building or palace. His bank account is almost in the fifty million dollar range - he wants to try out one more caper and then he'll retire. Yeah, we never heard that idea before but usually it is with older men. Templar is still young so why would he want to retire? Who is his employer? Oh, never mind.

Enter Elisabeth Shue as a nuclear physicist (or is she a chemist?) who knows a thing or two about plutonium, and warns underwhelmed fellow scientists of its dangers and capabilities. Templar wants the sacred plutonium, in actuality some sort of cold fusion formula devised by Shue, which is hidden in some fortress but it manages to land in the hands of the Russians who want it for profit value (One of the Russian baddies is played by Valery Nikolaev, who was put to better use later that year in "U-Turn"). At least that is what I gather from the plot, though it is as confusing and labyrinthine as "Mission Impossible." Shue eventually falls in love with Templar and they are both on the run, but from whom exactly?

"The Saint" has various loopholes, characters, double-crosses and plot holes big enough to drive a 65-million dollar budget through that I gave up trying to follow the movie, and decided to enjoy it for whatever else there was. The main pleasure is derived from Val Kilmer's exceptionally clever and engaging performance as the cryptic Saint who disguises himself as a Jim Morrison-like poet, a nerdy scientist, an arms dealer with a wild hairdo, etc. The point of the movie is to witness the various disguises and accents Kilmer has in store, and it is enthralling to watch him perform.

Less enthralling is Elisabeth Shue who has sweet chemistry with Kilmer yet elicits zero charisma and personality - is this the same Oscar-nominated actress from "Leaving Las Vegas"? Her appearance suggests a naughty schoolgirl more so than a scientist giving lectures.

I know I shouldn't recommend "The Saint" but it is unintentionally and unforgivably funny and so entertaining that I didn't mind sitting through it (though I may not sit through it again), It is a clean, inoffensive and innocuous movie with big stars, several one-liners, cardboard villains, some old-fashioned narrow escapes and general derring-do. Don't expect anything resembling art. 

Anxiety-ridden Superheroes

BATMAN V. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE (2016)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Reprinted with permission by Steel Notes Magazine

Reviewing a comic-book title like “Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice” should be a cinch. The two most iconic superheroes fight each other, there is the diabolical Lex Luthor, Wonder Woman and the potential members for a future “Justice League” film show up and there is some monstrous, Frankenstein-like creation called Doomsday. The fight of the century, lots of ear-splitting explosions on cue, crumbling tall buildings and it is all over. In other words, Michael Bay could have directed this in his sleep. Case closed; millions of dollars later, the studio got itself another cash cow that fell short of those billion dollar expectations. Only none of this is true. The fight of the century occurs at the hour and a half meter and it lasts a mere ten minutes. Zack Snyder’s cool, calculated and elegantly somber film is suffused with political innuendoes and a touchingly brief romance between Superman and Lois. It also asks us to question Superman’s existence – friend or foe? It also has Ben Affleck’s Batman who is conflicted about that flying alien with a red cape. No ordinary comic-book movie by any stretch of the imagination.

Right from the start of the film, I could tell that Zack Snyder found his calling in making something more epic and deeper than what I saw in trailers. Ben Affleck’s aged Bruce Wayne is zipping around Metropolis as he witnesses Superman fighting General Zod (the finale from “Man of Steel”) as they thrash against buildings left and right. The trouble is that one of those buildings is Wayne’s property and he watches it crumbling with his office workers down for the count. Yep, he is none too happy.

Meanwhile, the idealistic reporter Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) is hoping to expose Batman as a masked avenger who literally brands criminals. Yet the evermore cynical Daily Planet editor Perry White (Laurence Fishburne, who supplies a few flashes of humor) won’t have it. Clark lives with reporter Lois Lane (Amy Adams) and they have a tender scene in a bathtub that shows devotion to each other. Still, Lois can’t be engaged in love matters for too long when she faces trouble in the fictional African country of Nairomi while trying to interview a terrorist. This particular section of the film is slightly muddled (and we get a Jimmy Olsen cameo that tragically ends too soon) since it deals with a bullet that may have been engineered through LexCorp. Superman is blamed for killing civilians in Metropolis and in Nairomi and now he faces a congressional investigation – is Superman a threat to the planet Earth? Lois tries to back up Superman as a savior, not a murderer.
 
“Batman v Superman” is not as fully realized as it should be when it comes to the women characters. Lois is on the sidelines for most of the film, Clark’s mother (Diane Lane) is threatened and held prisoner, and even Gal Gadot as the Amazonian Wonder Woman makes one wish she was given more than a glorified cameo where she helps our caped heroes fight that gargantuan creature called Doomsday. This Doomsday has Kryptonian DNA from General Zod and Lex Luthor’s blood. Speaking of Lex, he is played by long-haired Jesse Eisenberg as a pathological, devilish version of Doc Brown from the “Back to the Future” movies. Eisenberg’s Lex waxes on with a frantic speech pattern and anxious use of his hands and dry-witted lines like, “The red capes are coming.” It is a chilling performance that even takes Superman aback.

But even with its glaring flaws, the movie soars with headless enthusiasm. It has a smooth rhythm and texture of coolness and contains a deliberately serious mood with attention paid to its two main characters. It is not all doom and gloom – I especially laughed at the Lex Luthor scene where he is astounded to see Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne together. Ben Affleck would not have been my first choice to play Batman but I did like his restraint and the world-weary edge he brings to it, provided with welcome support from Jeremy Irons as the faithful servant Alfred who provides dry-witted commentary. Henry Cavill still makes a formidable Superman yet it is really Affleck (surprise, surprise!) who walks away with this movie. Director Zack Snyder also walks away with presenting a more epic, ambitious picture than anyone had any right to expect. He presents two comic-book icons as potential terrorists in a world gone mad, with Lex upping the ante on the anxiety everyone feels. “Batman v Superman” may be the first truly post-modernist comic-book movie of the new millennium. 

Counter-Myth to the Warren Report

JFK (1991)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Originally published by Steel Notes Magazine

“Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.”

                                            ― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

I remember a snippet from a largely forgotten pseudo-documentary called "The Man Who Saw Tomorrow" where Orson Welles, who narrated the film, discusses the JFK assassination as foretold by astrologer Nostradamus. A figure's outline is shown inside a grassy knoll at Dealey Plaza that could be another shooter and I remember, at the tender age of 11, being both shocked and riveted by such a finding (not sure a second shooter literally hid in a grassy knoll but that is a discussion for another time). It made an impact on me and it was fulfilled one million fold by Oliver Stone's "JFK," a three-hour indictment of the Warren Commission's reports on the assassination of a beloved U.S. President, John F. Kennedy. The film itself is one of the few genuine cinematic marvels of the 1990's - it is shocking, riveting to the core, blazingly original, exasperating, exhausting and informative with a tremendous macro and microscopic view of the assassination from so many angles that it will leave you gasping for air. It is Oliver Stone's best, most accomplished work, perhaps his most difficult and certainly his most controversial.

Just how controversial was "J.F.K"? A Washingtonian film critic, Pat Dowell, resigned because the editor would not publish her positive review of the film. GLADD came out in full force to protest the film for its allegedly demeaning view of homosexuals, especially the businessman Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones) - however, according to the Los Angeles Times, no member from the group actually saw the film. In fact, GLADD found the film's shooting script objectionable, including a deleted scene (restored to the Director's Cut Blu-Ray/DVD) where Garrison would be falsely accused of soliciting sex from a gay man in a bathroom. Furthermore, LGBT activists were outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion attacking "JFK" and "Silence of the Lambs," which were nominated for Academy Awards, for their unflattering and unsavory depiction of gays in general. Critics excoriated the screenplay in its initial drafts while the film was shooting (how did anyone manage to get a copy of the script?) Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and Jack Valenti attacked the film as a series of lies - Rather had been a reporter on the scene at Dealey Plaza back in '63 but at the time of the film's 1991 release, he had not seen the film yet claimed it was fraudulent. That would be a far more dangerous thing for a journalist to do than whatever inaccuracies are depicted in Oliver Stone's film.

What has proven to be avoided in the discussion of "JFK" is what the film actually entails. Kevin Costner's New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison sums it up best - "let's speculate, shall we?" That is what Oliver Stone's film is - a wildly speculative assessment of various conspiracy theories that have amassed in the public eye and the literary world since that fateful day on November 22nd, 1963. I do not think Stone addresses the film as truth about who actually shot the President and from what angle - after a while, it doesn't matter nearly as much as why President Kennedy was killed. Stone, who co-wrote the massively detailed screenplay with Zachary Sklar (both adapting books by Jim Mars and Jim Garrison), begins with Dwight D. Eisenhower's famous farewell address to the nation about the military industrial complex and leads to feuds and vendettas between Kennedy and the Cubans, Fidel Castro, J. Edgar Hoover, anti-Castro demonstrators, the CIA and on and on. No one escapes Stone's Wrath of God polemic - everyone in the film who is not on Garrison's side is a traitor and a villain and, therefore, complicit in the murder of John F. Kennedy. Of course this is also Garrison's point-of-view, though why he attacked a businessman like Clay Shaw without hard proof remains a mystery (the film reveals in the credits that Clay admitted to having worked for the CIA under oath - that doesn't mean he was responsible and it is no wonder the guy was acquitted).

Stone's sledgehammering style shows a headlong urgency and need for a serious wake-up call to the defenders of the Warren Commission. With the help of gifted cinematographer Robert Richardson (who also lensed "Natural Born Killers," "Salvador" and other Oliver Stone films), the frequent film stock changes from black-and-white, to color, to 16mm, to 35 mm, to strobing the image create a probing, phantasmagorical, mind-bogglingingly "Rashomon" perspective. Various witnesses who saw shooters at the grassy knoll, who claimed to have seen Jack Ruby (the one who shot Oswald, exceedingly well-played by Brian Doyle-Murray) at Dealey Plaza, who saw gunfire emerging from places other than the Book Depository, who saw Jack Ruby and Oswald together at Ruby's nightclub, and who saw Clay Shaw gathering and planning an assassination with Oswald and various characters such as the volatile, chain-smoking David Ferrie (Joe Pesci) and a male hustler (Kevin Bacon) who believes fascism is making a comeback, create enough doubt that Oswald acted alone. Twice as chilling is Sally Kirkland as a prostitute named Rose, who reported Kennedy was going to be killed (as a witness, like most others, she ends up dead). There are also stellar turns from a superlative cast, including Edward Asner as a private investigator and FBI member; Jack Lemmon; Michael Rooker as New Orleans Assistant District Attorney whose loyalty to Garrison fluctuates; Walter Matthau as Russell Wong who first instills doubts about Oswald to Garrison; the unbeatable and uncanny Gary Oldman as the alleged patsy Oswald (the similarities to the real Oswald are beyond eerie) and last but not least, John Candy in an atypical, juicy character role as Dean Andrews, a sleazy lawyer. And we cannot omit Donald Sutherland's mysterious Mr. X who, in an astonishingly captivating sequence, reveals the apparatus behind the conspiracy and who would've benefited from Kennedy's murder - a coup d'etat that may or may not have been a result of Kennedy's planned withdrawal from Vietnam.
Ending the film is a 40-minute monologue by Jim Garrison as he presents the case in  Clay Shaw's trial of what may have actually happened on that day. It is Kevin Costner's shining moment in his career - an amazingly layered, nuanced and emotional speech that few actors could ever do justice or perform with such conviction. We get all the perspectives, the angles, the possibilities, the half-truths, the lies and the overwhelming sense that maybe we will never know the full story. I've admired Kevin Costner for many years but his Jim Garrison performance is one for the ages.

"JFK" has been outlandishly labeled by the late Jack Valenti as propaganda on the order of Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will." "JFK" is not a propaganda piece - it is, as Stone made clear, a "counter-myth" to the Warren Commission Report. That it is, but it also pinpoints to something grander about the nature of art in general - sometimes, as notable documentarian Robert Flaherty ("Nanook of the North") once said, you have to lie to tell the truth. In Oliver Stone's case, you have to lie and invent dramatic situations to get closer to the deeper truth. The truth is we will never know the full truth but we can only suspect.