Parkland (2013)

  I wasn't alive when JFK was assassinated so I don't have any personal grief about it.  I understand that it was a very dark time for America with the simmering Cold War, the recent Cuban Missile Crisis, and the looming horror of Vietnam.  This movie doesn't deal with any of those things.

In November, 1967, President John F. Kennedy was shot during a motorcade in Dallas, Texas.  He was rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where doctors and nurses tried in vain to save his life.  Several days later, suspected gunman Lee Harvey Oswald (Jeremy Strong) was also brought to Parkland after being shot by Jack Ruby.  The film also follows bystander Abraham Zapruder (Paul Giamatti) and the fateful video footage he shot purely by chance.

I'm not really sure what the point of this film was.  It's like making a movie about a housewife in New Jersey on 9/11.  Affected, sure, but not directly involved.  Still, I guess there are so many movies about Kennedy's presidency, connections, politics, and family members there aren't that many angles left to choose.  It was interesting in an academic way and the filmmakers drew some nice parallels between Kennedy's funeral and Oswald's but this was too much of an anomaly to enjoy.  Maybe for younger generations it will mean more.