Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

MusicChat It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Abbigail Bush what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

bkoganbing Winter Kills is one of the strangest films I've ever watched. But if you like to feast on ham acting than this is the film you've been waiting for all your life. The story has young Jeff Bridges hearing the deathbed confession of a man who says he was the unknown second gunman who killed Bridges's brother, the President of the United States 19 years earlier. Which would roughly be the gap in age between John F. Kennedy and Edward M. Kennedy in real life, a bit less for the Kennedys.But Bridges has never had any interest in politics, in fact hasn't had much interest in anything, but has enough money to indulge his idleness, courtesy of father John Huston. This confession does renew his interest and he pursues his own investigation with Huston's backing somewhat.After this as Bridges continues his quest you will see some of the best acting talent around all try to outdo the others. Huston tops them because he has more screen time, but Sterling Hayden as the crazed rightwing millionaire and Eli Wallach as the gay nightclub owner who shoots the arrested assassin like Jack Ruby in real life really earn some honorable mention. You usually have to see a horror film to find this much over the top thespianism.Winter Kills treads ever so gently into satire, but only tiptoeing because the film seems unsure of itself. It's like the director and writers didn't know what direction to take and decided to let the players figure it out for themselves. This is not a great film, but if not taken too seriously can be enjoyed on some levels.

ShootingShark Nick Kegan is the son of a wealthy patriarch and the brother of an assassinated former president. When he hears a deathbed confession that blows the lid on the accepted facts of his brother's death, Nick is forced into a dizzying maelstrom of counter-confessions and threats regarding what actually happened. Can he uncover the real truth ?Forget bigshot conspiracy flicks like All The President's Men and JFK, this brilliant but obscure movie (along with Blow Out) is for my money the best American political thriller ever made. It's both merciless and hilarious. It blows apart the JFK assassination into ten different crazy subplots and ties them into spaghetti, until our poor hero is so bewildered he doesn't know what's true, what's half-true, and what's total illusion. It's also an incisive stab at how corporate power really works; in one astonishing scene Bridges walks into a hospital full of people lying in dirty corridors and beyond them into a palatial private room where his father explains how owning hospitals is one of the most profitable assets a capable businessman can have in his portfolio ("No customer credit - pay in advance or get out. Unique product: pain. Laundry alone throws off enough to pay the orderlies and the lab."). This is the real America, rarely glimpsed in Hollywood movies, which are mostly made by subsidiaries of very large and anonymous corporations - Winter Kills was shot independently and distributed by Avco Embassy, a small company which made some great movies in its day (The Onion Field, The Fog, Scanners, several others), although the movie's troubled production and poor release is itself a spiral of conspiracy and criminal manipulation. The large cast of familiar faces are all wonderfully nutty in their roles, but Huston and Perkins - as thinly-veiled parodies of Joseph Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover respectively - steal the show. Perkins' jaw-dropping speech where he turns the whole plot upside-down is both incredible and revolting; political filicide - "Your father spent eleven million dollars to raise your brother up from a skirt-chasing college-boy to President of the United States. For twenty years he told him what to do and how and why he was gonna do it and what would happen when it was done. Your father put Tim in the White House - why ? Because that's where you can generate the most cash; a cold-ass business proposition, like everything else in this society. But your brother decided to stir up the population. Began to think we were all living in a democracy, he started believing it. Lunch with the De Gaulles, dinner with Khrushchev, the whole razzle-dazzle went to his head. Yet in spite of the fact that everybody out there in this country lives in the same dog-eat-dog way, grabbing any angle to make a buck, if you were to inform them that your father had Tim killed, they'd wanna tear the old man apart, limb from limb.". Watch out for too for spaghetti-western icon Milian as the con in the prison van, Kurosawa legend Mifune as the butler and Elizabeth Taylor in a wild wordless cameo as a society madame. The tragedy of Winter Kills is that its director, the very promising Richert, was effectively sidelined. Concurrent to this he made a great comedy - The American Success Company, written by Larry Cohen and also starring Bridges and Bauer - and later an offbeat teen-drama with River Phoenix, A Night In The Life Of Jimmy Reardon, but he become a marginal director, like Richard Rush or Michael Reeves. Don't let this distract you though; Winter Kills is the best political conspiracy movie the Mysterious They don't want you to see, which is the most important reason in the world for trying to track it down. Featuring excellent photography by Vilmos Zsigmond and John Bailey, and based on a book by Richard Condon (a terrific author, who also penned The Manchurian Candidate and Prizzi's Honor). Fabulous.

JasparLamarCrabb As much a buried treasure as any film could be, WINTER KILLS is spellbinding. Following a densely plotted film is never easy, but here is a film so rich and full of quirky touches, it's a pleasure to watch. Jeff Bridges is the younger step brother of an assassinated US President. He stumbles upon the actual culprit(s) behind the killing, learning way more than he ever wanted. His ancient, albeit highly libidinous, father is played with gusto by the great John Huston. Anthony Perkins and Richard Boone are Huston's aides (one good, one bad...you figure it out!) The film digresses here and there and probably has one too many subplots and false leads, but it's extremely entertaining and certainly something that should be sought out. The rest of the supporting cast includes Eli Wallach, Belinda Bauer, Toshiro Mifune (a very brief cameo). Elizabeth Taylor (looking stunning) pops up in a surprisingly small but pivotal role.

Kieran Green 'Winter Kill's from the novel by The Manchurian Candidate/ Prizzi's Honor Author Robert Condon, Jeff Bridge's play the brother of an assassinated President (This film has star tingly real comparisons of the Kennedy dynasty,) Bridge's seemingly lives in a sheltered existence but is brought out in the open when a dying man claiming to be the rifleman responsible for his brother's murder reveal's in the throes of death where the rifle is, Bridges is sent on a genuinely weird wild goose chase to find out who was responsible for his brother's death, but his perilous search lead's him to not one but many red herring's and in to the path of danger, by the mafia, The legendary John Huston, play's Pa Keegan the gruff patriarch of the Keegan family and also uncouth millionaire, it's one of those roles which Houston alway's makes endlessly memorable, 'Winter Kill's' Also features cameo's by many actor's/Actress's from the golden age, particularly, Anthony Perkin's Toshiro Mifune, Eli Wallach, Dorothy Perkin's 'Winter Kill's Thrill's