Citizen Rules...Cinemaesque Chat-n-Review

Mine. We watched the other one that you found about a month ago. It was decent.

Director: Rob Reiner
Writer: Joey Hartstone (screenplay)
Cast: Woody Harrelson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Michael Stahl-David, Richard Jenkins
Genre: Biography, Drama


A frank look at the man who took over the U.S. Presidency after the Kennedy assassination in 1963. Lyndon Johnson, otherwise known by his initials LBJ, is put under the director's microscope in this often overlooked film from 2017.

Director Rob Reiner who's known for his left leaning liberal views, presents LBJ in a surprisingly humane way. While the darling of left wing politics, Robert F. Kennedy is shown as a strong willed, ass hole. At least he's an ass hole to LBJ. I've seen a number of documentations on LBJ and RFK and this film and the way it represents RFK's extreme disdain for LBJ has been documented.

So while I usually wouldn't get my history from a movie, this movie at least mostly gets it right. LBJ could bust balls with the best of them, but that doesn't make him a bad man. In this reviewer's opinion LBJ was OK.


The film mainly focuses on the time frame of LBJ's early days. It starts with John F. Kennedy's decision to have LBJ be his running mate. A decision that his younger brother, Robert Kennedy is pissed about! RFK ends up in a very powerful position in his brothers cabinet, he's the Attorney General.

The actual assassination is only covered in a slight way and through what is suppose to be archival film footage, hence the quality of the above screen shot.

Most of the film deals with Lyndon Johnson's transition to the Presidency in the days following the assassination. RFK is constantly a thorn in his side, and the film comes to an emotional head with President Johnson's decision to support and help pass JFK's Civil Rights Act. And if you don't already know what happens, then you really need to watch this film!

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Director: George Gallo
Writer: George Gallo
Cast: Armin Mueller-Stahl, Trevor Morgan, Ron Perlman, Samantha Mathis, Ray Liotta, Charles During
Genre: Drama


This reminded me of the TV show The Waltons. Nope, John-Boy was not part of it, but it was a look backwards to 1974 with a now successful artist telling his story through voice over narrative to us the audience. Other than that narrative voice over there's no other similarities. And there was a lot more swearing than John-Boy would have been allowed to do!

This is a story of a 18 year old who wants to become an artistic painter. He befriends a grumpy old alcoholic Hungarian man, who once was a renowned painter but styles changed and his style of painting is not longer considered en-vogue. There's some interesting stuff in here about art, and how a lot of what people think of art is just BS and hype.


It's a quiet film at times, yet it has enough tension between the two characters to keep it interesting. Both Armin Mueller-Stahl & Trevor Morgan who play the older and younger painters were good. I have to give a shout out to Ray Liota and to Ron Perlman as the art expert who gets the wool pulled over his eyes by the older painter. It's a funny scene and too true in the art world.

Samantha Mathias plays a older woman who's interested in the young painter. I liked her character too and the brief relationship they have during the summer get away.

Local Color isn't the type of movie that you can write a 1000 word review on, it's good and so you should watch it!

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Director: Frank Capra
Writers: Richard Connell (story), Robert Presnell (story) (as Robert Presnell), Robert Riskin (screenplay)
Cast: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold, Walter Brennan
Genre: Drama

A rich business man with political aspirations, takes over a small newspaper and starts firing people, as he wants to make the paper into headline grabbing sensationalism...After being fired, girl-reporter Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck) pens a dozy of an editorial from a man who's disillusioned with the economy and the world in general and will kill himself on Christmas Eve by jumping off the roof of City Hall. The fictions man is given the name John Doe. The story sells papers but the other newspapers threaten legal action calling the story a fake, which it is. So to save their hides they find a down and out man vagrant man John Doe (Gary Cooper) and pay him to say he wrote the editorial letter. John Doe sparks a political grass roots movement and soon finds himself with 100,000 of followers, while his boss the corrupt newspaper man seeks to use him for his own political aspirations.



This is one of Frank Capra's signature movies. It never won an Academy Award, but the film has had lasting effects and has never left the public's mind. What makes this film so great is the little man who vs the corrupt political machine and tries to make a difference. The story is constructed in such a way that it remains interesting even today.

Gary Cooper is in fine form here and well suited for his role as John Doe, the reluctant hero and man of the people. And was Barbara Stanwyck ever more lively and charming than here? Together they have real chemistry which makes the movie a joy to watch. Rounding out the cast is a solid group of character actors:



Edward Arnold is the corrupt political boss who buys the news paper to use it for his own means...He's good at playing the heavy, a role he often plays in films. But it's Walter Brennan who steals every scene he's in. And he has an important role as the consciousness of John Doe. When John Doe gets to big for his britches, it's Walter Brennan who reminds him what life is really all about.

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Director: Tony Richardson
Writers: John Osborne (screenplay), Henry Fielding (novel)
Cast: Albert Finney, Susannah York, George Devine
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, History

Everybody loves Tom Jones??? I sure in the hell didn't! This 1963 Oscar Best Picture Winner, hasn't aged well. IMO it has to be the worst picture to win the Oscar. I don't understand how it won 4 Oscars?

The movie felt like a loose-structured, free-form 'hippie film', like the movies that were popular in the mid to late 1960s. I was surprised it was made so early in the decade. So I suppose points should be given to the Brits who were ahead of America in making that style of film.


Personally I don't like the 'lets ham it up and stare at the camera bit'...Tom Jones was all shenanigans. It reminded of the old Benny Hill TV show, which I never really got into. Though fans of such hammy movies like Airplane (1980) should love this zanny, anything for a laugh film.


Lovely Susanna York saves the day and I suppose I can't knock Albert Finney as he's only doing what the script and director told him to do. Still his character was way annoying.

It was cool seeing a very young David Warner as the bad guy, sly manipulator. A role that he would go on to make a career out of.

and if it wasn't for Susanna York that rating would even be lower.

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Director: Steven Spielberg
Writers: Liz Hannah, Josh Singer
Cast: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sarah Paulson
Genre: Biography, Drama, History

Based on a true story of the first woman newspaper publisher in America, who in 1971 had to make a critical decision to publish a stolen Pentagon top secret report on the failure of the Vietnam war.

One competing newspaper had already published excerpts from the document that shows that four different American presidents had known that the Vietnam war was unwinnable and that they lied to the American public about it.

With a court order injunction stopping the New York Times from further publishing the top secret document, Katharine Graham (Meryl Streep) owner of the The Washington Post has a hot potato dropped into her lap when she's give a copy of the stolen Vietnam report. Her gusty editor (Tom Hanks) wants her to publish the info, a move that could land her in jail. CR

I found the story and the history to be very important and interesting, but Stephen Spielberg just didn't bring this subject to life. A similar film Spotlight, nailed the subject of news reporting with a heart felt movie, but here everything felt lack luster. I'm surprised because Spielberg really hit a home run with Tom Hanks in Bridge of Spies.

I liked Tom Hanks here though we never really get to the core of what drives this man. Meryl Streep IMO is too well known to play this role. She was fine, but I think another actress could have breathed life into this movie.

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To me, The Post was simply a PC nod to a faded queen newspaper-- a film which tried to re-live the glory days of All the President's Men. They got their PC licks in, but the movie fell flat.

The reason is that the screenplay was dull. Why was it dull? Because there really was not much story there. "I want to publish." "No, I can't publish." "But I really want to publish........ but I can't." How many times can that be used as a tension device, especially when everyone knows the outcome? The answer? Once, not twenty times..

The real story would have been the daring exploits of the New York Times. They were the ones who were forging new territory. It would have been fodder for a much meatier screenplay.

As it was, The Post was just a shameless attempt to ride the coattails of the earlier film, and to trot out Streep and Hanks. The crafts stuff was good, but otherwise a "B" movie. All smoke and no fire.

~Doc

Director: Graeme Clifford
Writers: Eric Bergren, Christopher De Vore
Cast: Jessica Lange, Kim Stanley, Sam Shepard
Genre: Fictionalized Biography

The story of Frances Farmer, a Hollywood actress of the 1930s and 40s. Based on a fictionalized novel that came out a couple of years earlier. The story tells of how Frances life gets turned upside down when she lashes out against what she believes is injustices. She ends up in a mental hospital where they eventual lobotomize her.

Trouble is Frances Farmer was never lobotomized and wasn't a victim of her out spoken nature. She suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and at a time when there was little understanding of the condition and the treatments were ineffective (insulin shock injections, electric shock, ice baths, heavy sedation.)

The movie is based on the book Shadowland by William Arnold. Which was original written as a true biography but came out in court after the producers of the movie were sued, that the writer of the novel highly fictionalized elements of Frances life to create drama. Most notely the story of her having an orbital lobotomy at Western State Hospital in Washington state, which has been largely discounted as fiction.

There's two other movies about Frances Farmer made around the same time, but Frances is the best known of the three.

I thought Jessica Lange made a good Francis Farmer, and I just seen Francis Farmer for the first time in a movie, she was quiet the actress! It's too bad her career was cut short. The actress who played her mom was exceptional good.

I aim to go back and watch that again. Haven't seen it since it came out, and I hadn't known much about Farmer at the time.

But you're right, she didn't have a lobotomy; and even made a successful return to acting. Unfortunately she died of throat cancer in her 50s. So many of the good ones went down from heavy smoking.

~Doc

That's so true about smoking by early movie stars. I remember reading Gene Tierney took up smoking to lower her voice, as she though she sounded like Minnie Mouse on the screen. And it worked, smoking lowered her voice, then later it killed her.

Yeah, it was a crying shame. No one knew then that smoking could kill you. The great Nat "King" Cole smoked 4 packs of baby Kools (without the filters) because they kept his voice lower. Look at Bogart. John Wayne smoked 5 packs of Camels daily. 'Course he made it to aged 72, but so many went down in their 50s and 60s.


~Doc

Glad you finally saw this, Citizen...the movie has its problems, but I think Lange's performance is one of the top five performances by a lead actress in the 1980's and I'm pretty much the only person on the planet who thinks she should have won the Oscar over Meryl Streep. And yes, Kim Stanley was also superb as her mother.

I would have gave the Oscar to Merly Streep, but very close call, Lange was great too.

Have you ever seen Frances Farmer in a movie? I did just the other night, I need to write the review for it.

No, have never seen a Frances Farmer movie, I've thought about watching Come and Get it because it is mentioned in Frances and because Walter Brennan won one of his three Oscars for it.

That's her best and a solid film all around.

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I have that one to watch, just have to find the time. I did watch Son of Fury with Frances Farmer, Gene Tierney and starring Tyrone Power.

Director: John Cromwell
Writers: Philip Dunne (screenplay), Edison Marshall (novel)
Cast: Tyrone Power, Gene Tierney, George Sanders, Frances Farmer
Genre: Historical Drama-Adventure-Romance

About: Set in London during the early 19th century...A young boy of noble birth (Rodney McDowell) is cheated out of his title and estate, by a cruel and greedy uncle (George Sanders). The uncle claims to be the only living heir, so owns the boy's estate and makes the boy work in servitude as a stable boy. The boy grows up (Tyrone Power) and falls in love with his uncle's daughter (Frances Farmer). He pledges to earn enough money to win back his rightful title. So off to the south pacific he goes, where he finds wealth and a beautiful native girl, (Gene Tierney).


My Thoughts: That all sounds like a good receipt for a rip roaring adventure, complete with high seas sailing, and beautiful women too, and it is! This was great fun. It had just about everything including filming on a real tropical island, which surprised me.

This has been on my watch list for a long while as it was one of Tyrone Power's favorite movies of his films. The other was Nightmare Alley. Tyrone was much more talented than he was given credit for, usually he was stuck playing matinee heroes in lightweight movies, here he gets a chance to more.

But the main draw for me was to see a Frances Farmer film, after just watching a biography drama on her called Frances. I thought she was excellent, with real screen presences and a sense of empowerment, she had a real deep voice too, I didn't expect that. I'll have to watch more of her films, as she made a positive impact on me.

And of course this has two of my favorite stars...The man you love to hate, George Sanders. Here he's just flat out bad and yet he still manages to be a bit of a likable cad in a couple of scenes. And what can I say about the lovely Gene Tierney, that hasn't already been said.

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Farmer's resemblance to Jessica Lange is kind spooky.

Yup she does look like her. I know you seen Frances (1982), but have you seen the other movies based on Frances Farmer?

Susan Blakely plays Frances Farmer in a 1983 television movie Will There Really Be a Morning?, based on Farmer's autobiography. Lee Grant plays Farmer's mother in this production.

Sheila McLaughlin directed, co-wrote and starred in the 1984 small budget movie Committed.