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Reviews
Jail Bait (1954)
Well, what do you expect?
It's an Ed Wood film - he ain't William Wyler.
I gave it a 3, but it's still worth looking at (we thought) to see the kind of schlock that got shown (at dive-ins, at three-movies-for-a-quarter flea pits) in the 50s (I remember them well).
We got it in one for those '50 movies for $4.95' sets - so if you've got it, you might as well watch it.
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1971 (2014)
Good, but oh, those reconstructions!
Having lived through this period, and remembering a lot of it well, the film was something of a nostalgia trip for me, and a terrific companion piece to Betty Medsger's excellent book. (Wish we'd seen more of her.)
But why oh WHY do documentary filmmakers feel it necessary to use reconstructions with actors, as here? They are not only distracting (and perhaps confusing - ?), they suggest that the director does not trust her witnesses, who are FAR more interesting to watch and listen to than the dully animated wallpaper of the reconstructions.
For a purist like me, such tricks make me distrust the veracity of the material, but then I'm an old school documentarian, and growing more curmudgeonly with the passing of the years.
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