I thought I understood the title before I saw the film; now that I’ve seen it, I’m not so sure. Thomas Paine’s famous The American Crisis begins: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country.” That is, the summer soldier will bivouac when the weather’s fine, but hightails it for home when the wind blows chill and the snow falls. Captain America is not a summer soldier. He’s in it for the long haul, till the war is done. In other words, he’s a winter soldier. But then the film introduces an adversary known as The Winter Soldier who’s enhanced like Cap but little more than an automaton. Huh? Did I miss something?
Whatever, it’s an impressive action film that has something to say. Jerry Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states: “In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.” This is what seems to be happening in SHIELD throughout “Winter Soldier,” and its intrusions on American freedoms in the name of “security” resonate with the real world outside the movie theater. Cap isn’t buying and this puts him at odds with SHIELD and those trying to use it for their own ends. The FF score would be zero except for my zipping through fight scenes which invariably bore me.

FF=1

This Roger Corman film really creeped me out when I saw it as a kid.  (Co-written by Mark Hanna who later gave us Attack of the 50-Foot Woman – which held out the possibility that one might indeed return to the womb, but I digress).  It did not creep me out sitting there with Tom (yes, we screened a triple feature) under the influence of Cuervo Gold.  I’ll give it points for originality, but it looks like it was shot with a wind-up 8mm through homemade day-for-night lenses.  Damn near impossible to see what was going on at times.  But again, only 67 minutes long, so the FF rating is low,

FF=1

Billy Joe Bob Jesse Ed Thornton playing his patented wastrel (see “Bad Santa”) to good effect here.  I liked the kids, but this one isn’t for little kids.

FF= 1

Pretty good.  Thought I had the twist scoped early on but I was wrong. (That’s the only time I like being wrong.) Didn’t see it coming.

FF=1

This updating of The Sons of Katie Elder has a lot going for it – some good action and a satisfying finale – so why didn’t I like it more?  Wish I knew.  But my thumb rarely strayed to the dreaded button.

FF=1

A film on this subject will always be compared to The Exorcist and inevitably found wanting, but this was pretty good.  I could have done with fewer scenes of threatening hallways, but it took a serious look at a case of supposed possession from inside and out, with a minimum of exploitation.  Talky in places, but good talk.

FF = 1

I saw Steven Seagal’s name on it so I rented it.  Shouldn’t have bothered.  He continues his slide into obesity and obscurity.  The low FF score is a function of the film’s incoherence. I didn’t fast forward because I was trying to make sense of the plot.  A lost cause.  I should have fast-forwarded.

FF= 1

At last on DVD. I’ve been looking for this 1967 Lee Marvin film for years.  Directed by John Boorman and based on Donald Westlake’s The Hunter, it’s dated but still works to some degree.  I like Mel Gibson’s Payback (based on the same novel) better.  If you haven’t seen Point Blank, rent it along with Payback and watch them back to back.  It’s a tutorial on how movie making – directing, lighting, tinting, cutting, scoring, cinematography, etc. – changed over three decades.

FF= 1.0

Almost 3.5 hours. Yow. There aren’t many folks who like a conspiracy theory more than I (e.g., Conspiracies), but this was looooong. Compelling, though, even if the film places the entire blame on the wrong shoulders: the military-industrial complex (MIC).

According to Stone, the MIC wanted Kennedy dead because he was going to pull every American soldier and advisor out of Nam, thus depriving the MIC of all those contracts. This is a fiction concocted by the post-assassination canonizers of JFK who are embarrassed by the fact that he was a devout anticommunist.

Bear with me while I copy here a paragraph that Arthur M. Schlesinger deleted (maybe he just forgot?) from his coverage of Kennedy’s 9/10/63 news conference in his book, A Thousand Days:

“We want the war to be won, the communists contained, and the Americans to go home. That is our policy. I am sure it is the policy of Vietnam. But we are not there to see a war lost, and we will follow the policy which I’ve indicated today in advancing those causes and issues which help win the war.”

That’s 10 weeks before his assassination. Does that sound like a man who’s going to toss the Vietnam war in the dumpster?

Lastly, I don’t understand why Stone ignored the mob’s involvement in the assassination.  (Perhaps it got in the way of his agenda). If you want to read a gripping, unflinching, meticulously researched novel that considers all aspects of the conspiracy theories – including the mob and even Howard Hughes – pick up James Ellroy’s American Tabloid. By comparison the Stone film is a pallid, timid invertebrate.

FF= 1 (I FF’d through 20 minutes in the last act, but that’s only 10% of the running time, thus the good score)

Can’t say much more than captivating, fascinating, cool. Uniquely structured. (On a side note, I found the scenes involving the Red China’s Cultural Revolution upsetting – and proof of my assertion that, as far as individual liberty is concerned, the only difference between fascism and communism is the rhetoric.)

FF= 1 (during the Cultural Revolution sequence)