It could be a considered either a fluke or a coincidence but the fact is that 40 years ago, in 1976, 3 of the most important films in movie history were released. The first 2 Rocky and Network are both also reviewed in this blog, the third is “All the Presidents Men”, which was about the break-in at the National Democratic Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, that created the greatest political scandal in this countries history, known as Watergate.

In my opinion the story of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, both young reporters at the Washington Post, and what they went through to get the most important political story of all time, is far more interesting than the Watergate scandal or Richard Nixon’s paranoia that lead him to make a huge mistake that ruined his presidency and ultimately his entire life. Woodward and Bernstein made literally thousands of phone calls, they were lied to hundreds of times by hundreds of people, they desperately tried to get information through interviews and tracking down hundreds of leads, most of which lead nowhere, but they never gave up, and because of their dogged determination were ultimately successful in uncovering a series of criminal acts by not only many people who worked for President Nixon but ultimately the President himself.

I found the acting in All the Presidents Men outstanding, about as good as it can ever get in any movie. Jason Robards won a best supporting actor for playing Ben Bradlee, who was the executive editor of the Washington Post but for some odd reason, neither Robert Redford or Dustin Hoffman were not nominated for best actors even though in my opinion this movie represents one of the best movies either of them were ever in. I for one have long given up on the logic of the Academy Award nomination process. At least the movie was nominated for best picture which ultimately went to Rocky.

I found this entire movie fascinating not only with the great acting but with showing the process of uncovering an extremely difficult story that changed the history of this country. It is also interesting to see the technology from 40 long years ago and the use of typewriters and copy paper, which had to make the lives of any reporter so much more difficult than it is today with the use of computers and software. All the Presidents men represents for me one of the best reasons to go to the movies, to learn something about history that you didn’t know before. This movie was directed by Alan J. Pakula who was also not nominated for best director. The actress Jane Alexander was nominated for best supporting actress for her small part in the movie.

All the Presidents Men is a classic and hugely important film that should not be missed.

In this history of movies about science fiction, I would have to say that the Matrix series of 3 movies had the best scientific idea I have ever seen. The first Matrix movie came out in 1999 and was written and directed by Laurence and Andrew Wachowski, known at that time as the Wachowski brothers and who are now amazingly both transgender women, now known as Lilly and Lana Wachowski and this has to be one of the few times in the world that two brothers have both decided to become women later in life. The last two Matrix movies, Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions came out 4 years later in 2003.

The idea of the Matrix series about machines and computers taking over the world and dominating humanity is not a new one. What was the great new idea was how machines dominated humanity in the Matrix, by creating a fake world generated by computers and injected into the sleeping brains of humans who were farmed in huge warehouses where they are used as batteries to power the real machine world. The Matrix was this computer generated World, and in order to break out of it, you had to be given a special pill that breaks you out of the fake Matrix world and into the real machine world which was a dark depressing planet ruined by nuclear war.

The other original and great idea about the Matrix fake world are the abilities that human beings can have when they are in charge of injecting themselves into it by using their own computers there they can have incredible Karate skills that are a central part of many of the action scenes in all the Matrix movies. In the second movie Matrix Reloaded, there is a highway scene in the Matrix that is arguably one of the best action scenes using cars and motorcycles ever filmed in movie history. The producers actually built a highway to shoot this incredible scene that involved huge crashes with cars and tractor trailer trucks that are extremely impressive to see. Keanu Reeves is the star of all 3 of the Matrix films and these movies were the highlight of his career, both in terms of acting and financially as the Matrix trilogy has made Reeves very rich.

If you have not seen any of the Matrix movies, you owe it to yourself to see one or all of them, as they are some of the best science movies ever made.

The last movie Warren Beatty has been in was Town and Country that came out in 2001 and was considered mostly a pretty average movie. The last movie that Warren Beatty wrote, starred in and directed was Bullworth and that movie came out in 1998 and was mostly considered a good movie. The new Warren Beatty movie “The Rules Don’t Apply” was both written, starred in and directed by Warren Beatty and one has to wonder if this is the last movie he will ever make, given the long period of time between movies he has been involved in. While watching this film, I was wondering how long he took Beatty to write the screenplay for this movie? Could it have been most of the entire 15 years or perhaps in erratic spurts where he wrote and re-wrote the same script 50 or 100 times over the years, always looking for that perfect story or perfect ending? Unfortunately, from what I saw, it looked like this movie was written and re-written way too many times and the end result was a boring, disjointed, and mostly bad movie, with numerous Hollywood current and former stars, all probably friends of Beatty with the one bright spot being Lilly Collins who should have a very long career as a major actress in Hollywood.

This movie is mostly about two things. The strange and very depressing life of Howard Hughes whose very wealth and family fortune could have been his ultimate undoing and Hughes involvement with Hollywood, moviemaking and young women whom he promised Hollywood stardom only to later rudely ignore them, probably more because of his OCD problems and insanity than any other reason. These two story lines are not really related to each other especially considering that most of the non-Hollywood part of this movie had to do with Howard Hughes involvement with the Aviation Industry. This entire two-hour film flipped back and forth from the possible stardom of Marla Mabry played by Lilly Collins and Howard Hughes to his assistants and his problems with bank loans and the Aviation field. Mostly due to this constant story flipping and boring story I was looking at my watch, wondering when this pretty bad movie was finally going to end. It doesn’t take a great deal of thought to wonder why this movie was made, but clearly in this case, it is because of Hollywood clout and the producer’s belief in the “built in” fans of Warren Beatty would come out to see this movie regardless of the story or the quality. I was surprised how mostly bad and boring this movie was, considering all the people involved, but I guess what this proves in that 15 years of writing and re-writing one movie is probably more of a guarantee of a bad movie than a good one. The good things about this movie are Lilly Collins, who is the daughter of singer Phil Collins and has great future potential and great Hollywood looks and a few minor moments of humor. The bad things are many, starting with and most importantly how very boring this too long two-hour movie was.

The movie The Rules Don’t Apply is just not worth seeing and I do not recommend it.