Oliver Stone: Worst Director

In all fairness. I’ve seen enough Stone films to render a verdict on his directions. Here are some critiques:
Platoon – No linear storyline, just battle after battle. Horrible performance by Charlie Sheen
Wall Street – Attack on capitalism and Wall Street as a whole. Another bad Sheen performance.
JFK – Too long and dense on disputed history. Courtroom scene dragged on and on…..Costner doesn’t help.
The Doors- Inaccurate portrayal of Jim Morrison, according to Ray Manzarek.
World Trade Center – Didn’t see whole film but caught inaccurate scene of prostitute on street the morning of Sept. 11 an obvious attack on Giuliani.

What are your opinions?

I’ve heard people who actually researched the JFK assassination say:

“That movie got two things right: The date, and the identity of the man who was assassinated.”

Not as artistic as Kubrick and not as entertaining as Moore, with the negatives of both.

@ Jirin
That’s all it got right. Just a bunch of mish mosh.

@Tommy
Who are you saying is wrong?

Most good films (and an awful lot of bad and mediocre ones) fail the historical accuracy test, but JFK was never intended to be an accurate historical record, it was intended as a counter-myth to the Warren Commission Report.

And Platoon absolutely has a linear story. Taylor goes to Vietnam gung-ho, which soon wears off and then he’s good a choice on how to go forward, embodied in the good sergeant on the one hand and the bad sergeant on the other. Bad Sergeant shoots Good Sergeant to keep him from turning Bad Sgt. in for being bad. Later, Taylor has minor confrontation with Bad Sgt, followed by major confrontation during which he kills Bad Sgt.

No one is ever wrong. There’s no right way to see one thing or another. The fact that these films merely represent a very small viewpoint of a particular event or someone’s LCD is just one way of looking at something.

I guess that scene in Lebowski is best shown this way…

Yeah, I can get behind this. The only movie of his that I can get behind is Born on the Fourth of July. But that’s mostly because of Kovic’s story.

I used to like Stone’s movies as a kid, particularly JFK. But once I grew up and found out most of what was in the film was bullshit, my enthusiasm for the film waned. Never cared much for The Doors, in spite of my love for the band.

I think most people will agree he peaked with Scarface.

@Matt Parks
That’s hardly a linear storyline if its interrupted by battle after battle. Stone failed to highlight this synopsis throughout.

I think Nixon is his overlooked gem.

If be “peaked” you mean his consumption of cocaine peaked, then yes.

Yeah were upset that a film about American combat troops in Vietnam kept being interrupted by actual fighting, Danny?

Surely there are plenty of worster directors than Stone?

Matt said, Surely there are plenty of worster directors than Stone?

Yep. I don’t know if I have the energy to comment on the films (although I basically agree with Matt’s rebuttal about Platoon), but maybe I’ll come back later.

In a world where this guy:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0093051/

continues to make films, Stone doesn’t even come close. I kind of liked some of the crazy editing in JFK.

I got about 3/4 of the way through JFK and had to stop. Was there even a plot? I felt like I was watching some kind of documentary montage, but without the documentary part.

@Matt Parks
Any true filmmaker will try to balance out drama and the atmosphere surrounding them. Stone failed to balance out the dialogue and the battle scenes in Platoon, making the film lag on unnecessarily.

@Nadafinagh
I would rather sit through Uwe Boll at this point than watch another blaintant film of lies from Oliver Stone

“I think Nixon is his overlooked gem.”

This. Nixon is the only film I like by Stone. I haven’t seen his documentaries though which look interesting.

I’m not Oliver Stone’s biggest fan but your complaints seem like borderline trolling to me.

Platoon – No linear storyline, just battle after battle. Horrible performance by Charlie Sheen

For one thing this would only be an example of poor direction if he had attempted to make the film into a linear story and failed at it. As I recall, it was primarily meant as a visceral experience. For another, it was anchored by a pretty linear story.

Wall Street – Attack on capitalism and Wall Street as a whole. Another bad Sheen performance.

He is a bad director because he believes laissez faire capitalism and the financialization of an economy is inherently predatory and destructive?

JFK – Too long and dense on disputed history. Courtroom scene dragged on and on…..Costner doesn’t help.

I don’t think it was meant as a documentary.

The Doors- Inaccurate portrayal of Jim Morrison, according to Ray Manzarek.

So…?

World Trade Center – Didn’t see whole film but caught inaccurate scene of prostitute on street the morning of Sept. 11 an obvious attack on Giuliani.

Seriously?

There is plenty to criticize about Oliver Stone’s style (a complete lack of subtlety, uneven tone, not particularly well versed in the language of cinema, consistently subjugates his art to his message). Nitpicking things out of context is not helpful.

I think Nixon is his overlooked gem.

Amen. I’m also the only person on the planet who actually likes Natural Born Killers.

He is a bad director because he believes laissez faire capitalism and the financialization of an economy is inherently predatory and destructive?

All Stone did was give the audience a bland history lesson with some sex thrown in. That’s not cinema as far as I’m concerned. I had to control my laughter when my 12th Grade Economics teacher showed this in class, because of how incredilby bad it was.

Wall Street is trashy fun in its own way. Wall Street 2 is awful.

Oh yeah, Talk Radio is pretty entertaining although that’s mostly due to Eric Bogosian. For many, U-Turn is the Oliver Stone wild card. I don’t like it but it has its defenders.

“There is plenty to criticize about Oliver Stone’s style (a complete lack of subtlety, uneven tone, not particularly well versed in the language of cinema, consistently subjugates his art to his message). Nitpicking things out of context is not helpful.”

What makes Nixon interesting is his ambivalent and ambiguous take towards its subject matter. It made for an interesting film. Too bad he didn’t use the same approach with W. which could have worked as a dark Strangelove-esque satire but didn’t go far enough. I think he should have waited on that one. He didn’t have the appropriate distance.

I’ve seen worse movies, but Stone is certainly overrated with two Oscars under his belt. He is one of those directors who started out on the right note and has progressively gotten worse. I don’t even know why he felt the need to make a second Wall St., much less continue his war opus.

Platoon worked on its own level, Danny, especially the first half, which appeared pretty much like a replay of the My Lai massacre. The second half devolved into good sargeant/bad sargeant, but Berenger and Dafoe were good in the roles. I would agree that Sheen looked pretty hopeless out there.

Ari, I think it is more Hopkins than Stone who lent Nixon that air of ambivalence and ambiguity.

With almost miraculous prescience, the 1937 screwball comedy Nothing Sacred (William Wellman) includes the line of dialogue “Oliver Stone is worse than radium poisoning four times over!”

@Flip Trotsky
That’s on my viewing lis tnow LOL

All Stone did was give the audience a bland history lesson with some sex thrown in. That’s not cinema as far as I’m concerned. I had to control my laughter when my 12th Grade Economics teacher showed this in class, because of how incredilby bad it was.

A bland history lesson with some sex thrown in? I don’t think Wall Street was meant as a history lesson (it took place the same year it was released) and I don’t even remember the sex, to be honest. If you’re going to criticize the film (and, once again, I’m no big Oliver Stone fan) you need to take into account what it was trying to do, why it was or was not effective at doing so and whether it was even something worth attempting in the first place. What is cinema to you? Why did this not meet the criteria? How could or should it have been different? Why?

What makes Nixon interesting is his ambivalent and ambiguous take towards its subject matter. It made for an interesting film.

As a balanced character study it works very well (Anthony Hopkins’ best performance doesn’t hurt matters on that front) but what most surprised me was that rather than raze Nixon and stomp on his ashes he took a very nuanced look at his Presidency and legacy. Many have called Nixon the last liberal US President and Oliver Stone does not shy away from showing why.

Too bad he didn’t use the same approach with W. which could have worked as a dark Strangelove-esque satire but didn’t go far enough

I’ve always been curious as to how “W.” played in the US. I didn’t care for any of the performances (most felt like bad SNL impersonations to me) and the film was not particularly effective but I thought it was rather transgressive. By sticking so completely to the (spun) public record it becomes such a goofy and improbable portrait of events that had worldwide repercussions that it reveals how completely ridiculous it is to take that record at face value. Of course, pretty much every review I’ve read calls it an uncontroversial docudrama and gives Stone credit for not demonizing Bush Jr. Either most people missed the point or I did.

I’m with Hellshocked…“So?”

Stone is a connsummate propagandist. I point to Salvador as the prime example.

Most of his films induce headaches. Oh, and I suspect he made Wall Street 2 because he needed a hit (and didn’t get one) after the box office failures of W, World Trade Center and Alexander.

That said, Natural Born Killers was a reasonably interesting exercise/throwback to the types of experimental filmmaking Stone undoubtedly saw in the late 1960s. NBK and Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas are probably the closest mainstream cinematic examples of an acid trip that I can think of. That’s merely an observation; not necessarily a compliment.

Oh, and “The Hand” with Michael Caine is a guilty pleasure.

I’ll say Stone’s best work was his contribution to the screenplay for Scarface and leave it at that.

If anything, U Turn is his overlooked gem. The main problem I have with Platoon – and with all films that purport to give a rounded view of that conflict – is that they are all too linear – and fail to see that the “complete” picture on the Vietnam “war” doesn’t lend itself to narrative at all.

Oh, yes. U-Turn. Good call.

On reflection, that is probably Stone’s own “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia” — drenched in tequila and pitched like a fever dream.

I also forgot to kick his biopic of The Doors, a band I used to enjoy a long time ago. Mostly lazy performances and sloppy storytelling. Poor Meg Ryan was out of her element in that one.

Stone’s made some of the most god-awful crap out there. I’ll never forget or forgive WALL STREET or PLATOON but Oliver Stone is a genius of Kurosawa Kubrick Hitchcock Fellini Tarkovsky level compared with the vile Zack Snyder and the viler Rob Marshall.

I really liked U Turn, but I haven’t seen any of his other films, mostly cause I’m just not that interested in seeing topical dramas. But it sounds like I should give Natural Born Killers a try.

I thought it was pretty distasteful to make a movie about 9/11 in 2006. Really distasteful.

@Roscoe
I would agree with the former, but on the latter, Stone does not meet the artistry of the listed directors. Marshall and Snyder at least entice, Stone bores the audience with history lessons.