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By Jimmy Don Ventura

Movie Critic, Stockton Telegram-Dispatch
Guest Reviewer — CMC Blog

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I usually don’t review mini-series.

That’s mostly because I come from an era where if a television story lasted longer than three nights, somebody eventually got amnesia, possessed by the devil, or trapped in a grain silo during sweeps week. I’m a movie reviewer. Two hours, maybe two-and-a-half if somebody’s blowing up submarines or wearing a cape. After that, I start looking at my watch like a Baptist preacher at Golden Corral.

But every once in awhile, something rolls across my screen that forces me to make an exception.

This month, that exception is 11.22.63.

Now before anybody starts hollering that this originally aired on Hulu instead of a proper movie theater, let me remind you that half the folks in Fort Stockton now think “going out to the movies” means putting on sweatpants before opening Netflix. Times change. Pants get stretchier. Civilization limps onward.

Besides, this thing had three strikes working in its favor before I ever pressed play.

First, it’s about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the Captain over there has been a Kennedy assassination buff longer than most people have been paying property taxes.

Second, it was filmed mostly right here in Texas, where the sunlight already looks like old Kodachrome film and half the small towns accidentally still resemble 1963 if you squint past the Dollar General.

Third, and perhaps most importantly…

the thing is loaded to the gills with beautiful old automobiles.

And not fake movie cars either.

Real iron.

The kind with steel dashboards, vent windows, ashtrays the size of cereal bowls, and enough chrome trim to blind a Methodist deacon at high noon.

So naturally I settled into my recliner with a Dr Pepper and a legal pad like Roger Ebert if he’d spent more time at tractor pulls.

For those unfamiliar with the premise, 11.22.63 is based on the Stephen King novel published back in 2011. Now Stephen King usually writes about haunted hotels, evil clowns, possessed automobiles, and New England towns where every sewer drain apparently doubles as a portal to emotional trauma. But this one is different.

The story follows Jake Epping, played by James Franco, a high school English teacher who discovers a time portal hidden inside the pantry of a greasy spoon diner.

Which already sounds exactly like the kind of thing somebody in Fort Stockton would swear happened to their cousin after three Lone Stars and a questionable burrito from Eggs & Ammo.

The portal sends Jake back to 1960 with one mission:
stop Kennedy from being assassinated in Dallas on November 22nd, 1963.

Simple enough, right?

Wrong.

Turns out the past doesn’t appreciate being monkeyed with. Every little thing Jake changes causes resistance. The universe starts acting like an irritated rodeo bull that’s figured out you’re carrying a cattle prod.

People interfere.
Accidents happen.
Coincidences stack up.
And before long Jake realizes history behaves less like a timeline and more like a drunk ex-wife with access to your checking account.

Now I’ll tell you this right up front:
I loved this show.

Loved it.

Not in the modern internet sense where everybody screams “masterpiece” fifteen minutes after watching something while simultaneously eating mozzarella sticks in boxer shorts.

I mean genuinely admired it.

The atmosphere alone is worth the price of admission.

The streets feel alive.
The diners feel sticky.
The cigarette smoke practically seeps through the television.
And the cars…

Sweet Lord above.

The cars in this series are so correct they made me emotional.

You can always tell when Hollywood gets lazy with period cars. They usually just round up whatever shiny classics happen to be nearby and park them around like automotive lawn ornaments. Suddenly every scene set in 1962 looks like the Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale auction collided with a Cracker Barrel gift shop.

Not here.

These cars look lived in.

Some idle rough.
Some sit slightly crooked.
Some have paint that looks one summer away from surrendering completely.

That’s authenticity.

That’s history.

The absolute star of the whole production, as far as I’m concerned, is Jake Epping’s 1958 Ford Fairlane 500 Sunliner convertible.

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Buddy…

that car walks away with the entire show.

Two-tone black and yellow.
Long sculpted quarters.
Quad headlights.
Tailfins restrained enough not to look ridiculous but flashy enough to let everybody know Eisenhower-era optimism was still alive and buying Brylcreem by the gallon.

That Fairlane glides through the series like Sinatra after two martinis.

I found myself rewinding scenes just to admire the side profile.  And let’s just go ahead and admit that the Captain is right about fender skirts, at least on this car.

That car understands America better than most political consultants.

And the production uses it constantly. It becomes part of Jake’s identity. Everywhere he goes, that Fairlane follows like a loyal chrome-coated bloodhound.

Frankly, if they’d given the car a few extra lines of dialogue, I wouldn’t have objected.

Then came the moment that nearly launched me clean out of my recliner.

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The 1957 Plymouth Fury.

Not merely a Fury.

THE Fury.

The actual screen-used car from Christine.

That’s right.

The production borrowed the original car from Volo Auto Museum specifically for this series as a Stephen King Easter egg.

When Sadie Dunhill’s ex-husband rolled onto the screen behind the wheel of that blood-red Plymouth, I pointed at my television hard enough to nearly separate my shoulder.

That Fury still radiates menace.

Most cars look happy to see you.
That one looks like it knows where your body would fit.

Forward stance.
Gold trim glinting like brass knuckles.
Tailfins sharp enough to commit tax fraud.

I swear the temperature in my living room dropped five degrees when it appeared.

And the thing is, the show never turns these cars into cartoon props. They’re woven naturally into the environment. That’s what makes it work.

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A gorgeous silver 1958 Ford Thunderbird convertible drifts through several scenes looking like pure jet-age optimism on whitewalls. I’ve always had a soft spot for the Squarebirds even if some Thunderbird purists act like Ford personally insulted their grandmother by adding rear seats.

Then there’s the 1960 Dodge Polara Sport Coupe.

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Good grief.

That Polara looks like it escaped directly from a cigarette advertisement narrated by a man named Skip.

Massive fins.
Low roofline.
Enough chrome to signal satellites.

I paused the show for nearly ten minutes just to study the taillights.

That’s not criticism.
That’s scholarship.

The background traffic deserves praise too.

That’s where the production really earns its paycheck.

You see green Ford pickups parked naturally beside curbs.
Green-and-yellow Studebakers lurking around intersections.
1963 and 1964 Chevrolet Impalas everywhere because half the country drove them back then.

And as the timeline advances, newer cars slowly appear:
1966 Chevy Impalas,
a 1973 Chevy Monte Carlo,
a 1978 Cadillac Sedan DeVille,
and a 1974 Buick LeSabre drifting around like the approaching malaise era itself.

Most productions don’t understand this:
cars are chronological fingerprints.

You can date America by bumpers alone.

Naturally, this entire series sent me spiraling down my own personal rabbit hole involving Dallas and the Kennedy assassination. That happens every single time. You start reading about Dealey Plaza and three hours later you’re examining blurry photographs while muttering things no healthy person should say aloud.

Which reminds me.

Back in 2023, I attended the Great Southwest Newspaper Movie Critic Convention in Dallas representing the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch.

That sounds prestigious until I tell you it mostly involved underpaid entertainment writers arguing about streaming algorithms while eating stale danishes in airport hotels.

At the time I was dating Wynona Wheeler.

Now Wynona was a perfectly pleasant woman if your expectations remained appropriately limited.

But history was not her thing.

I’m not entirely certain she understood who Kennedy was beyond “that president people keep making documentaries about.”

While I spent an afternoon wandering through The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza studying exhibits with the intensity of a man trying to solve history itself, Wynona snuck into a gigantic Mary Kay convention over by the Trade Mart.

I remember standing near the sniper’s perch contemplating one of the great tragedies of the twentieth century while Wynona texted me:
“Do you think mauve works with my undertones?”

That relationship was not destined for longevity.

Though I bear her no ill will.

Last I heard she’s still working toward that famous pink Cadillac and living in an Airstream parked beside Trixie over at Modern Manors Mobile Home Village.

Honestly, she’s probably closer to achieving the Cadillac than most presidential commissions ever got to untangling Dealey Plaza.

But enough about Wynona and her aggressively moisturized destiny.

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Back to 11.22.63.

Sarah Gadon is excellent as Sadie Dunhill. The relationship between her and Jake gives the series real emotional gravity. Without that love story, the whole thing risks becoming just another conspiracy thriller with nice upholstery.

James Franco surprised me too.

He plays Jake with exactly the right level of exhaustion and determination. By the end of the series, he looks like a man who hasn’t slept properly in three fiscal quarters.

Which feels appropriate.

The pacing works beautifully because the show understands tension doesn’t always require explosions. Sometimes it’s enough watching a man realize history itself wants him dead.

That’s heavy stuff.

And somehow the series balances all of it:
romance,
politics,
time travel,
paranoia,
and enough gorgeous Detroit steel to make me briefly consider refinancing something.

What impressed me most was the restraint.

Modern Hollywood usually approaches the early 1960s like an overexcited antique mall. Everything gets exaggerated. Every jukebox glows too brightly. Every waitress looks like she escaped a Halloween costume catalog.

Not here.

This version of the sixties feels ordinary.

Which makes the tragedy feel bigger.

These aren’t mythical people wandering through Camelot.
They’re Americans driving Fords to work and smoking cigarettes beside vending machines while history quietly loads the chamber.

That’s what the show understands.

And it’s why it works.

By the final episode, I found myself genuinely tense despite already knowing exactly how history unfolds. That’s difficult storytelling to pull off.

So yes.
I’m making an exception for a mini-series.

And yes.
I’m giving 11.22.63 a full five Italian Carcanos out of five.

Not just for the political intrigue.
Not just for the time travel.
Not just because Stephen King somehow managed to turn nostalgia itself into something eerie and dangerous.

But because the people behind this production understood an important truth:

History doesn’t merely live in textbooks.

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It lives in chrome.
In cracked steering wheels.
In cigarette lighters that still work.
In whitewall tires humming across hot Texas pavement.
In the exhausted idle of a Fairlane convertible parked beneath a Dallas streetlight while the entire future of America waits one intersection away.

And brother…
that’s the kind of filmmaking I’ll gladly pull over for every single time.

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