I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This movie is one of the most unique documentaries ever made. You don't even need to be a fan of documentaries to enjoy this film. The concept and execution is very masterful. Basically, here was a shooting in Austin, Texas in 1966. There was a sniper at the top of a tower in the area around the University of Texas. It was a devastating event that killed 18 people, But since it was the sixties, there was no footage. So, they used actors to reshoot the events that happened in 1966. Then, they used a technique called rotoscoping to animate the events that happened in 1966. It's truly brilliant when you think about it. The pacing in this movie is some of the best of the year. The editing in this movie is stellar. If you are an editor, watch this. The only problems I have is that I was screaming in my head at some of the things the characters were doing, and there was a scene were there was no sound at all (except the talking). The weird part is that the music and sound mixing in the rest of the movie was all very good. Anyway, this was a very good movie. The premise is unique, the execution is great, it is good on a technical aspect, and it is very intense and sad emotionally. In all, it is great and definitely recommend it to everyone.

Director Peter Maitling delivered us this bright and full of hope piece, instead of the expected dark and serial killer centred documentary we get to know the ones who really matter, the heroes, the ones who survived and helped the injured ones to survive putting their own life in real danger.Social media and news broadcasters should learn something with this way to deliver a message or to do things. when this terrible things happen the message should carry not the gore in it but the good that came out of it. Beautiful. '8'

This unusual film demonstrated an innovative way to fill in the gaps of a major news event where there are still survivors alive to share their memories but where there's a lack of available archive footage to fully tell the story. The event here was as I understand it, the first, but as we now know, far from last occasion when a warped individual exercised their constitutional right to bear arms by massacring innocent civilians in cold blood. On this occasion, ex-Marine Charles Whitman killed his mother and pregnant wife before taking to the tower at Texas University to rain down murder and mayhem onto whoever came into his eye-line.I can recall the excellent debut feature of Peter Bogdanovich "Targets" made in 1968 which made this then very recent story its backdrop, albeit with different names for the principal characters. The ambition of this feature however was to take us through the actual 96 minutes of the onslaught almost in real time by recreating the memories of the survivors, some since deceased, in vivid animation sequences. I doubt it's coincidence that the film's running time is the selfsame 96 minutes. Actors resembling the real life characters play the latter's younger selves in both telling the story as it occurred in pieces-to-camera as well as in physical recreations of the events of the day as it unfolded. There is no third party commentary at all and at the end we get to see the witnesses in the present day, to give the film, as well as themselves perhaps, a sense of closure.The animation takes a little getting used to initially but is skilfully done in a near-lifelike manner which gradually draws the viewer into the action. Again I applaud the modern trend of giving next to nothing by way of background or motive and therefore importance far less justification to the perpetrator of these awful killings. Instead the focus is, as it should be, on the remarkable courage of everyday individuals, from the young cop who goes to the crime scene even when off-duty, the shopkeeper who ends up on the tower with the policeman, rifle-in-hand, to the young students who run in full view of the shooter, one young girl to comfort a wounded pregnant young woman, lying prone next to her fatally shot boyfriend and a couple of boys who actually lift her out of harm's way.One wonders if the filmmakers here will go on to use a similar technique on other in-living-memory calamitous events but one suspects it will more likely prove a one-off exercise. I do believe though that the director's primary motivation was to re-tell a remarkable, if tragic, story rather than demonstrate flashy technique. If occasionally there are mistakes in the pacing as sequences are unnecessarily run and re-run for no apparent reason and also no real political point is made about gun-control itself, still the narrative is compelling as only a true-life disaster can be.

Keith Maitland's "Tower" is the fascinating and powerful new documentary about the mass shooting which occurred on the University of Texas campus in the city of Austin on August 1, 1966. While such shootings today are commonplace, the University of Texas shooting was perhaps the first mass murder to be covered by the media in real time. Although the story of the "Tower shootings" has been told before on a number of occasions on television, Maitland's take is completely different and original. In addition to utilizing the extensive film footage that was taken at a distance as the events unfolded on that tragic day, Maitland employs rotoscopic animation to illustrate the experience of survivors of the massacre as well law enforcement responders, in an up-close, personal way. Maitland employs actors to play the parts of the participants and paints over their images with his software, which enables him to capture a reasonable reenactment of what went on that day. Interviews of victims and responders in the present day are interspersed with their fictional counterparts, which gives us a more emotional, complete picture of what happened as opposed to a simple, "dry" documentary.The main protagonist here is Claire Wilson, an 18 year old student, who, along with her boyfriend, were the first to be shot by the diabolical shooter, Charles Whitman, who ended up killing 16 people and wounding approximately 30 others, from his perch on top of the University of Texas tower. Wilson's boyfriend was killed instantly and she also lost her unborn child, as she was five months pregnant at the time.The story hardly ends there. For an agonizing hour and half, Wilson was lying on the pavement in 100 degree weather, bleeding from a bullet to her abdomen. Remarkably, another student braved the sniper and joined Wilson in order to comfort her—all the while playing dead as Whitman had her in his sights. Finally, additional heroes--a group of students-- ran out in front of the tower entrance, and dragged Wilson to safety.The shooting is told from the perspective of a number of key eyewitnesses including a TV reporter who drives around in his news car, reporting the events as they transpire. We also follow two police officers and a civilian as they bravely climb up the tower, and eventually take out the gunman, who Maitland wisely hardly mentions.During a recent Q&A with a lead producer, I learned that the University of Texas did not want to talk about the massacre after it happened. In fact, it was only last year that a true and lasting memorial was erected there to commemorate the terrible event. Tower becomes a welcome opportunity for the survivors to express emotions that have been in some cases, bottled up inside them for years.Tower is successful due to its effective use of documentary film footage and modern-day interviews, coupled with the rotoscopic animation which gives it a dream-like quality. Tower is a gripping tale which will leave you speechless after you leave the movie theater.