Reviews

I loved this. I still watch it online several times a year. Holly Malone, Girl Reporter, is out to find and interview the legendary Frank Dancoolo, Paranormal Drug Dealer. Filled with hilarious one liners, this short jumps off the screen at you in just under seven minutes and is a non-stop ride in how shorts should be made. When it ends, you will wish it could go on and on.

In Neo-Mega-Ultra-Tokyo, Frank Dancoolo is selling dangerous paranormal drugs made from his own spinal fluid. Clearly labeled "Please trip responsibly", some customers go beyond the warning labels and end up dead. Enter Holly Malone, looking for answers to the string of unexplained deaths using her reporter's intuition and a street smart taste test. When she finds Dancoolo, all is not as it would seem. Will she score the Story of the Millennium?

The girl playing Holly is spot on perfect, hammering her lines like Katherine Hepburn on speed. The crisp, clean direction wastes not a second of film time while the other two actors play off her with the right amount of boredom and genuine lust for life.

Don't miss this one.

I haven't seen this movie since it was first shown on television, thus my memory is hazy. It concerns a small group of Mormon fundamentalists who run afoul of both their less extremist Mormon neighbors and the local sheriff. Disputing issues like polygamous marriage, home schooling and water rights, the situation escalates over a period of time into open warfare, with the catalyst for the final confrontation being the bombing of the local Mormon Stake Center (i.e. church) by the fundamentalists, who hole up at their family farm.

The F.B.I., led by Dennis Franz, is called in as this is now beyond the control of the local authorities and a Waco-like siege ensues. Frustrated, and unable to make any headway in negotiations, an assault is finally ordered, resulting in the capture of the renegade group but also in the death of a police officer.

This was not a particularly good movie as the buildup to the final confrontation lacked a sense of drama or inevitability. We feel no empathy for any of the characters except for the policeman who is killed, as he gave his life over what should have been a minor affair that spun out of control because of stupidity masquerading as religious debate. The fundamentalist group takes most of the blame here.

Dennis Franz's character tries to be sympathetic, but not being a Mormon, or even particularly religious, he clearly fails to understand what this is all about. Having written this, I am surprised at the parallels between this incident and the later standoff at Waco, Texas.

This is quite a good movie, even though I remember it being started while the siege was still underway. The tension ratchets up throughout as we see Tim Daly do an excellent job as David Koresh ruling over his acolytes, alternately bullying and charismatic. He gives a convincing portrayal of a "sinful messiah" which certainly raised concerns in the straight-laced Baptist community of Waco, Texas. This is what initially attracted the attentions of various law enforcement agencies.

The interest of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is piqued, but never fully explained, as it is to this day. Both sides are then set on a course that ultimately leads to violence, leading up to the climactic attack of the Branch Davidian compound, which caps and concludes the movie. The siege and its fiery conclusion are not seen.

The movie doesn't portray Koresh as a frothing at the mouth religious fanatic but as a true believer in what he says. Thus, the viewer is left with the ambiguous feeling that he may not have deserved his fate. The ATF agents are never fleshed out and we don't feel any real sympathy for their deaths. We end up not totally understanding why this tragedy occurred, which is exactly how we felt then, as now.

Several up and comers appear in this film, including Neil McDonough (Band of Brothers and Medical Investigations) and NYPD Blue's Gordon Clapp. Lewis Smith is wasted as one of the slain ATF agents.