Oswald's Ghost: Critic Reviews

Stone argues quite convincingly that Kennedy's horrifically violent death will continue to prickle the national psyche.

[A] meticulously researched, seemingly unbiased summary of the [JFK] killing and the major conspiracy theories.

After a strong start, Oswald's Ghost ends up as ephemeral as its namesake.

Impresses as a concise, intelligent and rigorously well-researched piece of work.

Oswald's Ghost is a thorough and systematic primer on how and why the JFK assassination became a generational obsession, and seemed to signal the demolition of at least one version of the American dream.

A straightforward documentary on the assassination of President Kennedy.

Of course, it doesn't tell us what really happened; that's still shrouded in mystery and always will be, since Lee Harvey Oswald was shot within two days of his arrest.

So long as filmmakers think they're exposing hidden facts, we'll be experiencing the effects of "Oswald's Ghost" long into the future.

The more interesting question to raise might be "What toll does it take on a society when someone as inconsequential as Lee Harvey Oswald can slay someone as historically significant as JFK?

What starts out interesting eventually feels unfocused: Just what was the rationale for making this in the first place?

Taking on the most over-used documentary topic in America, this JFK assassination flick has to produce a new angle. It doesn't do it.

The only obvious question that Oswald's Ghost raises is: how come Mort Sahl wasn't in the movie?

Filmmaker Robert Stone doesn't have the answer, but his curiosity about Oswald and the entire assassination experience has been shaped into this fascinating documentary.

Although [the director] often shifts abruptly from micro to macro, the film holds together, and a two-pronged thesis gradually emerges.

Veteran conspiracy buffs probably won't find much of Stone's material particularly new, but Stone's film does serve as a neat summary for the rest of us while offering a number of intriguing insights into how conspiracy theories work...

Though the film may not change many minds about what happened and why, at least it attempts to describe and explain events like few other documentaries on the same topic.

Though the material is hardly fresh, it retains some fascination, and Stone has assembled Oswald's Ghost well, with few of the stylistic tics that marred his Guerilla: The Taking Of Patty Hearst.

The selling point of Oswald's Ghost, Robert Stone's documentary about the enigmatic blue collar Texan generally regarded as the assassin of President John F. Kennedy, is its refusal to dispute the safest assumption.

The title of this nonfiction examination into JFK's assassination implies that its focus is the legacy of Lee Harvey Oswald and his infamous crime, but the truth is far more mundane.

This is a good refresher course for those who aren't familiar with the JFK assassination. But despite the film's attempts to close the case, there will always be questions about what happened on that November day in Dallas.