Movie Review: 'Our Nixon' -- 3.5 stars

Our Nixon
3.5 stars
Documentary by Penny Lane

A veritable gold mine for history buffs, this documentary features reams of previously unseen Super-8 home movies shot by Richard Nixon aides John Ehrlichman, H.R. Haldeman and Dwight Chapin, depicting the president and the White House milieu.

Interspersed with news broadcast footage, subsequent interviews with the three aides (who all served prison time for Watergate involvement) and revealing clips from Nixon’s infamous White House tapes, the film from director Penny Lane paints a riveting portrait of a man in full.

It offers a ground-level perspective of the president’s positive accomplishments (opening China) and many negative traits, including an overarching paranoia, homophobia and obsession with minutiae. In the end, the film unpacks an unmatched culture of corruption from the points-of-view of the men on its frontlines.