Wordiezett So much average

Ensofter Overrated and overhyped

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

davea-16 This film has great production values and footage, but all it does is gloss up another lame attempt to paint conspiracy buffs as paranoid losers blind to the evil machinations of one Lee Harvey Oswald. We all know we'll never know the truth, but the flawed logic applied in these 'documentaries' always baffles me. A second shooter means a controversy, right? Isn't the second shooter Jack Ruby? He was stalking the Dallas Police station all weekend, but Stone wants us to believe his shooting of Oswald was spontaneous and proves it by showing how close he cut his appointment with destiny at the Western Union? Give me a break. Nuts who claim JFK was shot by his driver or that Tippett was the shooter on the Grassy Knoll don't help...but in the end people just need to rely on what can be seen, and that's that there is no way Oswald pulled this off alone on any level. End of story.Of course this is better than the reenactment of a few years back that 'proved' the magic bullet theory and then concluded that it eliminated discussion of a conspiracy. You know, without ever addressing the head shot(s). Ever.Wake me up when someone without an agenda produces something new.

wulfstan That is about the extent of this film's contribution. If you think Todd Gitlin, or Tom Hayden know beans about any of this, their participation will disabuse you of that notion. And if you have forgotten how Mark Lane got rich off his speculations on the assassination, here is a reminder.If you think polling a subset of less than 2% of the US population is key to understanding an issue in which Stone tells us more than 70% of the US population is united in having no faith in the Warren Report, you will love the wacky logic of OSWALD'S GHOST.A LOT of opinion and very few facts. I find the musings of an Mailer on his last legs interesting because I find Mailer's thought processes interesting, but he adds nothing to the issues here either. One might as well hear yet another actor tells you what he/she "thinks" about politics. They do better when someone writes their lines.The objective of this documentary is to show how "dark revanchist forces" (AKA Republicans, generals, intelligence folks, corporate types etc), as opposed to the good old-time lefty Marxist doctrine, resorted to assassination in the cases of JFK, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and the like to hold back "the future." If you have somehow missed out of on the many "documentary" efforts of film makers like Stone to get this point across, here is another chance.Case in point, it is useful to have Edward Jay Epstein's send up of Garrison's numerological idiocies, but whatever viewers think about "who dun it," and we have a lot of evidence here on IMDb that there are a lot of opinions about that, Stone intentionally ignores the hardest evidence of what really counts right under his nose.The key point is that there is no evidence as yet that ANY single assassin can have pulled off the JFK assassination... Oswald or anyone else. Trying to aim and fire all those shots and make two hits with a piece of crap like a Carcano bolt action with that scope... just hasn't worked.Any fair minded analyst must concede THAT makes a lot of difference to evaluating a film like OSWALD'S GHOST which is more agitprop than Doc.EVERY attempt to duplicate the marksmanship required of the "one assassin in six seconds" theory over the past 40 years has failed. One of the most detailed attempts to duplicate it was put together by CBS News a few years after the assassination. Stone carries a few feet of film showing the test underway. But Stone never tells us that CBS couldn't duplicate it either.It does matter. Stone is just another tourist, putting together his idea of pretty faces that the PBS PC will find acceptable and same-old same-old commentary with no context and no understanding of what he is dealing with. Hey, they paid him and ran it.Too bad that was enough for him

Joe Stemme OSWALD'S GHOST got a brief theatrical release on it's way to an American EXPERIENCE broadcast on PBS. There is little to recommend for seeing it on the big screen as most of its footage is either archival stock that was meant to be shown on TV in the first place, or typical talking heads interviews from the present day.The film goes over familiar territory for anyone even vaguely familiar with the JFK assassination. Some of the talking heads such as Mark Lane and Dan Rather trot out stories most have seen before. More interesting are individuals like former Presidential Candidate Gary Hart and Norman Mailer who, rightly or wrongly, give us their insights into the matter (more on Mailer later). For the first hour or so, Director Robert Stone tries to portray a sort of kaleidescope (a word used in the documentary) of the Assassination, the official and conspiracy theories and a view of how it affected people of the immediate and subsequent generations. On that level, it sort of keeps one's interest. Some of the footage is less familiar than others, and it's edited together competently enough. Gary Lionelli's music itself is evocative, but, unfortunately, Stone mixes it too high and he drowns out some of the dialog in the process. Worse, much of the archival footage would be more effective without the intrusive music. *** Possible SPOILER AREA ***And, then, in the last 20 minutes, Stone completely flips the film on its end. Gone is the dispassionate, relatively even-handed approach and he gives the film over completely to one side of the argument. Norman Mailer and HIS theory of the assassination come to dominate the final section of the documentary. Mailer's conclusions become the film's conclusions. In light of Mailer's subsequent death, the film could just as easily been called, "Mailer's Ghost". And, then, it ends abruptly.Without knowing more about Stone (his surname an irony in itself that even he can't avoid as he includes behind-the-scenes footage of OLIVER Stone directing his film JFK!), it's impossible to know if this method of seemingly pulling the rug out from the viewer was an intentional act of the old in-and-out sucker punch, or if it naturally evolved that way through the editing process. In either case, it considerably weakens the film - setting all prejudice one way or another about one's particular view of the JFK assassination aside. Not only does it come out of nowhere, but it tarnishes what was good about that first hour.

laubklein2 Hi! We are going address the physical evidence in this case...right...well we are just not in this film. This film barely deals with the physical evidence at all. Except to say that he was shot from the front...except Norman Mailer says he wasn't so the case is now closed. Nope...sorry son it ain't. This film looked fantastic but did nothing to change my mind or anyone else who has one. One of the problems with this film is that it glosses over so many issues it really isn't funny. First of all the massive amount of information that has been released about this case was never covered in here. Secondly, (and I know this was mentioned before) was the fact that we get no history of anyone on the Warren Commission before or after the assassination. This would be irreverent if it were...say...the OJ jury but instead it's some people that Kennedy fired and others who didn't want to be there...you know LIKE EARL WARREN!!!! Who, by the way, did not believe his own report...but hey who cares? Thirdly, the choice of people interviewed for the film. Patricia McMillian is CIA. She applied in the fifties and her family housed the biggest defector in the known universe Stalin's daughter. So she is very well connected if you know what I mean. Then, we get to Jim Garrison. They present a theory I have never heard in the fifteen years I have studied Garrison, then say he hypnotized someone and drugged them, (which is standard police procedure), then make him crazy because he thinks the media ganged up on him. Wow imagine that the media ganging up against someone that has never happened ever in this country! Nope! (They then use his half hour commercial-free statement that he had to sue for because a biased report to get as proof of this) Have no fear there is not a shred of government documentation that states this is true. I mean except for the ones that have been released...that state this. And then there is the other evidence that something was trying to stop him...you know like his inability to get warrants served that he has issued. And the fact the Richard Helm's admitted under oath that Shaw was a CIA agent...but don't worry about that? Outside of all of this...the film looks fantastic. That is why I gave it a three. If you want facts though go elsewhere say to JFK or Beyond JFK or JFK a revisionist history or something like that...Now do me a favor and trash JFK for me...let's bring it on!!!