A profile of the life of the 37th President and his tumultuous administration, starting with his humble beginnings in Stonewall, Texas and early political career leading up to two elections involving ballot-box stuffing instances, one which cost him the Senate in 1942 and another which gained him the job in 1948. From there he ascended in Washing politics through his bullish tenacity and gained the vice presidency, despite a deep rooted hatred for the Kennedys, and ultimately the unexpected Presidency which saw his massive push for his Great Society social programs but was dominated and ultimately cut short by the Vietnam War and his widely perceived mishandling of the conflict. This entry in the superb American Experience President series is a consummate look at a gruff, flawed, and human political animal.

*** 1/2 out of ****

After unexpectedly winning a tight 1880 presidential campaign, James A. Garfield showed much promise in the job before being gunned down by an itinerant paranoiac just four months into his first term. Eventually succumbing to his injuries, The President may have pulled through if not for blind loyalty his doctor, an old friend, who insisted on outmoded medical practices to treat his wound. From a historical novel by Candice Millard, Murder of a President is informative, but hurt by tacky recreations, an unneeded Ken Burns imitated approach, and an extremely narrow focus of Garfield's life, career, and presidency.

*** out of ****

From its start as a Dutch trading post through the immigrant experience up until present day, covering formative politicians including Boss Tweed, Al Smith, and Fiorello Laguardia, and other visionaries that shaped its mindset and the physicality such as Walt Whitman, Frederick Law Olmstead, and Robert Moses, New York: A Documentary Film is a lengthy, comprehensive, informative history of the incomparable metropolis by Ric Burns, told with the same rigor and craft associated with the works of his brother Ken. There are many passages of note and a great use of footage though I somehow wished the film had time to slow down to focus on smaller stories instead of on the hustle and bustle and constant progress and forces shaping the city. The documentary is also hurt by chest thumping New Yorkers, historians and celebrities alike, constantly harping on the vast greatness of the city while adding little to the experience. Lastly, following the 9/11 attacks, a final episode was tacked on detailing the monotonous history of the World Trade Center buildings, which was mostly overlook during the first run.

*** out of ****

The American Experience two part docuseries on the retracted life, trials, and triumphs of the 35th President is occasionally enlightening while covering well trodden territory, but is lifted through the use of tremendous footage.  Further, it is refreshing that director Susan Bellows and writer Mark Zwonitzer decided to gloss over the assassination and focus largely on Jack's early life.

*** 1/2 out ****

In Spring 1975, no longer fearing reprisals from Richard Nixon, the North Vietnamese Army began to rapidly retake South Vietnam and close in on the port metropolis Saigon. With orders from the White House to evacuate the American embassy and a stalwart ambassador (who had lost his only son in the war) refusing to admit defeat, envoys and soldiers, surreptitiously and against orders in many cases, carried out the mass evacuation of thousands of endangered South Vietnamese. Rory Kennedy's extraordinary and moving documentary depicts goodness and courage in the face of disaster and defeat through the use of tremendous footage and storytelling devices in addition to fascinating interviews from many on the ground.

**** out of ****

Prior to 1910, Manhattan was completely isolated from rail traffic, and all commuters and cargo had to make to their way to the isle by way of ferry. It was the vision of Pennsylvania Railroad President Alexander Cassatt to not only construct a tunnel system under the East and Hudson Rivers, but also to erect a grandiose terminal modeled after the Roman Baths of Caracalla. Cassatt did not live to see his dream realized, and the glorious station only stood for just over a century when the railroad company fell on harsh times and sold it off in 1963 to make way for Madison Square Garden.

A year after demolition began on Penn Station was the year where slowly evolving and sharply opposing agendas came to a head in America: The Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan. Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston and changed his name to Muhammed Ali. Goldwater Republicans sounded the return of the Conservative movement while student demonstrators at Berkeley essentially kicked off the protest movement. The Civil Rights movement, with factions led by Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, fractured, people of all creeds and colors joined in the Freedom Rides, and the nation was shocked and inflamed following the murder of three of their members. In short, things would never be the same. 

The Rise and Fall of Penn Station and 1964, two recent entries in PBS's American Experience program

share very little in common, one a focused. clearly defined documentation, the other much more generalized, and both demonstrating the series at both its best and worst. Penn Station contains remarkable footage of both the massive construction and somewhat tragic demolition of the resplendent structure, is informative and even fascinating on some levels, and features knowledgeable commentators representing their specific field. 1964 is segmented and all over the place, containing a few intriguing sections but mostly covering widely known information, a lot of which has been done to death by the program itself. I did enjoy hearing from contributors who actually lived through the events.

When William Randolph Hearst caught wind that RKO's boy wonder Orson Welles had chosen for his first feature film to tell the life story of a fictional newspaper magnate who gains the world but loses his soul, Hearst sought to destroy all copies of the film, was nearly successful, and actually did succeed in stifling Kane's initial blockbuster success. What Hearst didn't know, was that Welles' film was as much of a reflection of his own life as it was a sharp jab at the all-powerful media tycoon. The Battle Over Citizen Kane is really just separate biographies of these two larger than life personalities which draws fascinating comparisons between both while telling their compelling stories through the use of excellent stock footage, documentary technique, and guest commentators knowledgeable in relation to both megalomaniacs. 

In the early 20th Century, the American household was chockfull of unregulated and highly toxic everyday items which were often used to produce, whether accidental or intentional, a fatal result. As difficult as it is to believe in an era where forensic evidence is nearly irrefutable in the public mind, scientific results in criminal cases were at the time easily fudged, regularly challenged, and often dismissed. When forward thinking Charles Norris took over the corrupt New York City Coroner's Office in 1918 and appointed Alexander Gettler as his chief toxicologist, they fought a long, uphill, and ultimately successful battle in legitimizing forensics. From a novel by Debbie Blum, The Poisoner's Handbook is essentially a compendium of the top cases and challenges Norris and Gettler faced told with both an academic clarity (beneficial for those not scientifically inclined like yours truly) and a genuine flair for mystery storytelling, though it does somewhat begin to border lesser true crime programming.

On the evening of October, 30th 1938, a country frazzled by economic depression, impending war in Europe, and a series of national catastrophes was primed to be exploited and terrified by Orson Welles, the boy wonder who had already conquered the Broadway stage, along with the rest of his CBS Mercury Theater radio crew, through a surreal, pulse pounding broadcast of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. This documentary essay crafted for the American Experience series is a succinct, informative, and stirring account of both the fearful climate at the time of the infamous Panic Broadcast, as it soon became known, and a fascinating look into Welles' creative process and his responses during the fallout. The only component of the film that doesn't quite come off, though it must have seemed like a good idea, are the recreations of first person reactions to the transmission. 

In the mid-90s, PBS premiered two unremarkable documentaries on Westward Expansion, the first entitled The Way West by Ric Burns, the second simply called The West, which was more or less an extension presented by his brother Ken under the direction of Stephen Ives. Ric Burn's film is extremely dismal and grows redundant while focusing almost exclusively on the Indian Wars and receives little help from its uninspired cast and vapid contributors. Ives' followup casts a bigger net and generates more interest but is still dreary, repetitive, and somewhat disappointing considering the  inherent allure of its topic. 

Overlooking a portion of the Blacks Hills of South Dakota, the sacred land of the Sioux, lies the sixty foot granite visages of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt. PBS' American Experience documentary on Mount Rushmore is a well presented and surprisingly humorous telling of sculptor (and apparent character) Gutzon Borglum's wild efforts to procure funding for the monument and his fourteen year, often dangerous completion of the task. 

John D. Rockefeller, the son of a traveling con artist and a devout mother, was a callous businessman with great disdain for his competition and the public. He would go on to amass one of the greatest fortunes the world has seen, give much of it back, and create a legacy shrouded in contradiction and mystery. The Rockefellers is a fascinating profile, mostly focusing the life of the family's patriarch, and told by many of his progeny. The film is admirable for not taking the hard line and instead offers a sweeping and often sympathetic view of the oil magnate.

In 1846, just a few years before the Gold Rush, a group consisting of thirty six men, women, and children seeking a new start in California attempted, against advisement, to cross the Sierra Nevada range and found themselves ensnared in the frigid mountains and ultimately resorting to cannibalism. Ric Burns' treatment of the chilling, mythical tale of Manifest Destiny is hauntingly told and features exquisite photography of the region.

Henry Ford, a poor farm boy from rural Michigan, would open up the world for millions of people with his invention of the Model-T and development of the assembly line, becoming one of the greatest entrepreneurs in the history of the United States. Behind closed doors, and occasionally in public, he demonstrated an uncompromising, bitter, and even lonely persona, and found often himself embroiled in arguments and controversies, sometimes even within his own behemoth auto company. Henry Ford, an installment in PBS' American Experience series, is a fascinating and ultimately sad portrait of the legendary industrialist, which draws an all-encompassing portrait of Ford's public and private life.

In the late 1950s, a group of forward thinking inventors defected from their company, moved to an undeveloped portion of Southern California and formed a new organization where they would invent and refine the microchip which, among other things, pushed Americans to the forefront of the Space Race and led to the technological breakthroughs which would be mounted in the area over the next several decades. Silicon Valley is an informative and somewhat redundant entry in PBS' American Experience series as told by many who were present in those early days who helped to shape our modern society.

With approximately 620,000 lives lost during the Civil War, there was scarcely a household, North or South, that wasn't ravaged by the grief of this immediate influx of loss that altered the American terrain swiftly and forever. Ric Burns' Death and the Civil War plays like an affixation to his brother Ken's monumental, epic length documentary, of which he was also a contributor. The film is as mournful as its title would indicate and as poetic and intelligent as you would assume a continuation, albeit an unofficial one, of that great work would be, and benefits from the narrowed view of its scope, conveying its sorrowful message thoroughly.

Whether it was a newspaperman who saw his life's work in abolition, a traveller through the South stunned by the brutalities of the institution, a daughter of slaveholders recognizing the evil and going against the grain to fight it, a farmer whose devilish ire was stoked by its wickedness, and a self-taught African-American who bore its evils firsthand, The Abolitionists focuses on five leaders of the movement who were instrumental in bringing about slavery's end. William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Angelina Grimke, John Brown, and Frederick Douglass went to their excruciating limits to bring the onset of seismic change in the years leading up to the Civil War. This three-part installment in the American Experience is a well-told yet mostly familiar history containing surprisingly good recreations and is severely tarnished by editorializing experts offering obvious commentary and arrives at unsatisfactory conclusions such as the notion that the original sin of slavery was erased by the signing of the 13th amendment.

Situated on the Atlantic Ocean, at the southernmost part of Brooklyn near the western mass of Long Island, Coney Island is a small mass of land that at the end of the 19th Century became home to the first American theme park. Featuring amusements and sideshows, it was an incredibly celebrated destination for city residents and tourists, increasing in attendance every year, and fading just shortly after the close of World War II due the ever increasing mobility of society. Ric Burns' film is a loving profile of the beloved theme park, assembled from a wealth of footage which, somewhat perplexingly, doesn't always manage to completely capture one's full attention.

From Cleveland, Ohio, Jesse Owens was a track and field star who, following a successful career at The Ohio State University, went on to Olympic glory at Berlin in 1936 where he won an astounding four gold medals and spit in the eye of Hitler's notion of Aryan supremacy. His entry in the American Experience catalog is a surprisingly short but well rounded account nonetheless that does an excellent job of documenting both his triumphs and tribulations that may have gotten lost in his Olympic legend.