Medium Cool (1969)

 

A TV news reporter finds himself becoming personally involved in the violence that erupts around the 1968 Democratic National Convention. 

Expertly made mixture of fiction and documentary is intended as portrayal and political comment of its time, successfully so; its plot, however, is not particularly relevant or memorable.  

Halliwell**: "Stimulating if overlong comment on the quality of life in the sixties, immaculately made and with a rather effective though obvious twist ending."

Maltin****: "Arresting, unique film..." 

 

Psycho (1998)

A young female embezzler arrives at the Bates Motel, which has terrible secrets of its own.

Curious experiment - copying a cinema classic shot-by-shot (with an occasional minimal aberration) and offering a star cast and some magnificent color cinematography - never achieves, in any aspect,  the mastery of the original - which in itself is an interesting result.

Halliwell (no star): "A genuine curiosity, though, unfortunately, not a very interesting one: a remake of Hitchcock's thriller that hardly deviates from the original, except that it is in colour, the acting is inferior, and the content is a little tired."

Maltin BOMB: "Slow, stilted, completely pointless scene-for-scene remake...(with a few awkward new touches to taint its claim as an exact replica). The result is an insult, rather than a tribute, to a landmark film."