betelguese_1

The ultimate coming-of-age guy movie. Incorrectly marketed as a simple road trip flick (with one of the worst trailers of all time), this movie sends five characters (a scoundrel, a groom, a soldier, an accountant, and a preacher) into the abyss that is adulthood in the time of the Vietnam War.

The cinemaphotography is outstanding, the soundtrack is amazing, and the journey makes the viewer realize that they too have a question to answer: are you a Gardner or a Wagner?

This is my favorite Kevin Costner role...from a time when he played a character instead of playing Kevin Costner.

I've watched this movie a 100 times. Watch it once and you will be hooked.

The Alamo Documentary is a labor of love for the many San Antonio historians and reenactors who were interviewed. Sadly, this overly long work doesn't actually depict the full history of the Alamo itself. Interviewees refer at great length to the event as if the audience already possesses full knowledge of the story. Yet an actual account of the battle is no where to be found.

This piece was obviously produced in response to John Lee Hancock's 2004 "The Alamo," with the first third of documentary discussing various historically inaccurate Hollywood movies. Clips from silent films and from the John Wayne Alamo movie were interesting, but since the documentary producers likely did not have the rights to either the 2004 Alamo movie or Disney's "Davy Crockett," the interviewees were only able to refer awkwardly to aspects those films.

The second third of the movie looked more like a local TV station interviewed the world's biggest Alamo memorabilia collector, then covered this year's Alamo battle re-enactment. I am sure the members of the San Antonio Living History Association absolutely LOVE this documentary because it is mostly about them and their awesome hats from the period.

The final third of the documentary was a mishmash of partially-related historical political data. This laborious section of the documentary didn't follow a discernible story-telling pattern but appeared to be thrown in at the end because mercifully stopping the piece in under an hour just wasn't happening. It's Texas, after all, and everything is bigger there.

I love a good documentary and picked this movie up for $1 at the local Goodwill. I think I overpaid.

Couldn't consider myself a movie critic until I had seen the worst of the worst, so I finally obtained the MST3K version last week and oddly enough I have watched it three times already.

Manos is indeed wretched in every way, but it is far more entertaining when you consider that the movie was not created as part of a Hollywood mainstream film but rather the labor of love of some residents of El Paso, TX.

And although the acting, script, filming, and music are all amateurish at best (after all, for all of them, this was the only acting they ever did), I am sure they had fun making the film.

Ultimately, I think this would be a great film to show at film schools as examples of what not to do in nearly every aspect of film-making. In that way, perhaps the pour souls who made this film (and the three who committed suicide shortly thereafter) can find solace.