MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

GazerRise Fantastic!

Infamousta brilliant actors, brilliant editing

GarnettTeenage The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

kapelusznik18 (Some Spoilers) Straight out of the newspaper headlines from the turbulent 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention that changed the course of politics in America "Medium Cool" has become one of the most influential films to come out of the 1960's that still, some 50 years later, reverberates with audiences today. It's at first a simple story of a news photographer John Cassellis, Robert Forster, who gets caught up with the events that sweep the country while doing his job covering a human interest story about a Chicago cab driver returning $10,000.00- something like over $100,000.00 in 2016 currency-that he found in the back seat of his taxi.The black cab driver instead of being being treated as a Good Sumerian is given the third degree by the police as if he's a criminal or drug dealer that greatly disturbs John who's in the police station covering the story. John himself soon is confronted by the taxi driver's relatives who enlighten him in how things are done to those in the ghetto by those in authority that in fact leads to the violence that he's later to encounter-In a full scale police riot- in the movie! Ther's also Eileen,Verna Bloom, a single mother who's husband is reported missing in Vietnam who's son Harold, Harold Blankenship, has become uncontrollable in not having a father in the home and was caught breaking into John's car in a Chicago parking lot. John who has a totally nude hop in and out of the sack with reporter Ruth, Marianna Hill, earlier in the movie-That at first gave the film a X-rating-has now become very serious with Eileen and tries to help her and her son out. But things soon get out of hand with the city of Chicago about to explode and him as well as Eileen being right in the middle of it with riots breaking out all over the city as the Democratic National Convention gets into full swing! Using actual footage of the Chicago anti Vietnam riots during the Democratic Convention as they were happening the movie has a very documentary tone to it with both Robert Forster and Vera Bloom just going with the flow of the action with out any script or direction from the film makers to follow. Looking for Harold who got lost in all the actions the two end up in a fatal car crash looking for him by the time the film ended. With Harold safe and sound but both homeless as well as orphaned in the process. A "Citizen Kane" like film "Medium Cool" gets better with every showing and has since inspired many like wise movies in the future that as good as they were or are could never duplicate it.

dougdoepke This unusual film combines fictional narrative with live footage of the turbulent 1968 Democratic convention.The movie made a splash upon first release. At the time, it couldn't have been more topical for the explosive political events then taking place. Director Wexler had his camera fortuitously placed to catch the bloody clash between protesters and Chicago cops backed up by the National Guard at the 1968 Democratic convention. Wexler caught the afternoon clash in the park, but not the probably unfilmable bloodier riot of that evening. Nonetheless, it's near documentary footage of an historic event that remains the movie's chief attraction.The movie itself is non-linear, with little narrative or dialogue. Instead it fades in and out on reporter Cassellis (Forster) as he learns some ugly truths about the state of the nation, circa- 1968. His and cameraman Gus's (Bonerz's) run-in with the black radicals in a Chicago ghetto remains a haunting slice of angry cinema and appears, to me at least, to be largely unscripted. I expect it was the first personal exposure many white audiences had to black rage then bubbling up in urban centers. This angry encounter, combining with raucous anti- war protesters and paramilitary police, present a vivid profile of the civil unrest of the time-- (Oddly, however, I don't believe the word 'Vietnam' is uttered once in the dialogue).We also get a sense of dislocation through the characters of Eileen (Bloom) and small son Harold (Blankenship). Uprooted from their West Virginia home by an absentee father, Eileen now ekes out a living in Chicago, while Harold tries to adjust to city ways. Their rural background and accents mark them as hillbillies in their new surroundings. Nonetheless, the sophisticated Cassellis finds Eileen's naïve simplicity appealing, and their little tour of the psychedelic nightclub reveals something of the urban counterculture flourishing at the time.I get the feeling Wexler wasn't sure how to end the quasi-narrative part of the movie, and there, I believe, he stumbles by settling for a clear contrivance. Nonetheless, the movie's last shot of his turning the camera onto us suggests we too are part of the story, which seems fitting for a film of this innovative sort. Anyway, the movie remains a one-of-a-kind, and though no longer topical, does furnish a fascinating glimpse of a turbulent time, which in many ways is still with us.

Gethin Van Haanrath Movies have a way of capturing the moment better than recreating it. I can only dread what a recreated 1968 in Chicago would look like from a Hollywood perspective. It would probably resemble something out of Forrest Gump. But Medium Cool happened to capture some brutal fight scenes with police in Chicago as well as scenes from the black ghettos. You can't recreate this stuff. This isn't a documentary but cinema verité and combines fiction and non-fictional elements. It's all shot with Chicago of 68 in the background. A landmark and infamous year for the US with the assassinations of RFK and MLK as well as the 1968 Democratic National Convention which was met with severe state repression. The state wasn't negotiating at this time, it was brutally sending men off to war and attacking those at home with the hired goons of the police force.It's a great movie which manages to combine fiction and non-fiction and shows us what the sixties were really like. It wasn't all love beads and LSD, although there is an amusing psychedelic sequence which takes place in a club.I think what I liked most was that even people who were non-political were being dragged into the politics of the time. Events were that serious at the time and people had to begin picking sides, the pleasant, white, middle-class interior of the Chicago DNC or outside fighting and raging against the police.

bribabylk ...but if you have to see one, "Medium Cool" would be it. This got a lot of attention in its day for some of the cinema verite style filming, and letting Verna Bloom wander around through the riot of the Democratic National Convention...it can be tiresome and confusing at times, but also rather thrilling and moving. By the end I was glad I had watched it. It also serves to remind one of how different the American movies of the late 60's and early to mid 70's were from those being made today. Today's made-for-the-megaplex movies just seem so "safe" in comparison. And good for Robert Forster, he was never one to play it safe..."Medium Cool" is yet another movie in which he's willing to strip down and show off every bit of his fine body, front and back, for the enjoyment of the audience. You won't catch too many American male stars who'd be willing to dare that today.